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John  Rutkin 


THE 

CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE, 

JFour  ILerturea 

ON  • 

WORK,  TRAFFIC,  WAR, 

AND 

THE  FUTURE  OF  ENGLAND. 

BY 

JOHN    RUSKIN,    M.A. 


And  indeed  it  should  have  been  of  gold,  had  not  Jupiter  been  so 
poor.  —  Aristoi'hanes  (Plutus), 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS    Y.    CROWELL  &  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Iftro 


fNTRODUCTION.* 


I .  Twenty  years  ago,  there  was  no  lovelier  piece 
of  lowland  scenery  in  South  England,  nor  any  more 
pathetic  in  the  world,  by  its  expression  of  sweet 
human  character  and  life,  than  that  immediately  bor- 
dering on  the  sources  of  the  Wandel,  and  including 
Ihe  low  moors  of  Addington,  and  the  villages  of 
Beddington  and  Carshalton,  with  all  their  pools  and 
streams.  No  clearer  or  diviner  waters  ever  sang  with 
constant  lips  of  the  hand  which  "  giveth  rain  from 
heaven ; "  no  pastures  ever  lightened  in  springtime 
with  more  passionate  blossoming ;  no  sweeter  homes 
ever  hallowed  the  heart  of  the  passer-by  with  their 
pride  of  peaceful  gladness  —  fain-hidden  —  yet  full- 
confessed.  The  place  remains  (1870)  nearly  un- 
changed in  its  larger  features ;  but  with  deliberate 
mind  I  say,  that  I  have  never  seen  anything  so 
ghastly  in  its  inner  tragic  meaning,  —  not  in  Pisan 

•  Called  the  "  preface  "  in  former  editions ;  it  is  one  of  my  bad 
habits  to  put  half  my  books  into  preface.  Of  this  one,  the  only  prefa» 
tory  thing  I  have  to  say  is  that  most  of  the  contents  are  stated  more 
fully  in  my  other  volumes ;  but  here  are  put  in  what,  at  least,  I  meant 
to  be  a  more  popular  form,  all  but  this  introduction,  which  was 
written  very  carefully  to  be  read,  not  spoken,  and  the  last  lecture  on 
the  Future  of  England,  vnth  which,  and  the  following  notes  on  i^ 
I  have  taken  extreme  pains. 


4  INTRODUCTION. 

Maremma,  —  not  by  Campagna  tomb,  —  i\ot  by  the 
sand-isles  of  the  Torcellan  shore,  —  as  the  slow  steal- 
ing of  aspects  of  reckless,  indolent,  animal  neglect, 
over  the  delicate  sweetness  of  that  English  scene : 
nor  is  any  blasphemy  or  impiety,  any  frantic  saying 
or  godless  thought,  more  appalling  to  me,  using  the 
best  power  of  judgment  I  have  to  discern  its  sense 
and  scope,  than  the  insolent  defiling  of  those  springs 
by  the  human  herds  that  drink  of  them.  Just  where 
the  welling  of  stainless  water,  trembling  and  pure> 
like  a  body  of  light,  enters  the  pool  of  Carshalton, 
cutting  itself  a  radiant  channel  down  to  the  gravel, 
through  warp  of  feathery  weeds,  all  waving,  which  i 
traverses  with  its  deep  threads  of  clearness,  like  thi 
chalcedony  in  moss-agate,  starred  here  and  there 
with  white  grenouillette ;  just  in  the  very  rush  and 
murmur  of  the  first  spreading  currents,  the  human 
wretches  of  the  place  cast  their  street  and  house 
foulness;  heaps  of  dust  and  slime,  and  broken  shreds 
of  old  metal,  and  rags  of  putrid  clothes ;  which, 
having  neither  energy  to  cart  away,  nor  decency 
enough  to  dig  into  the  ground,  they  thus  shed  into 
the  stream,  to  diffuse  what  venom  of  it  will  float  and 
melt,  far  away,  in  all  places  where  God  meant  those 
waters  to  bring  joy  and  health.  And,  in  a  little 
pool,  behind  some  houses  farther  in  the  village,  where 
another  spring  rises,  the  shattered  stones  of  the  well, 
and  of  the  little  fretted  channel  which  was  long  ago 
built  and  traced  for  it  by  gentler  hands,  lie  scattered, 
each  from  each,  under  a  ragged  bank  of  mortar,  and 
scoria,  and  bricklayer's  refuse,  on  one  side,  which 
the  clean  water  nevertheless  chastises  to  purity ;  but 


INTRODUCTION.  5 

It  cannot  conqiier  the  dead  earth  beyond ;  and  there, 
circled  and  coiled  under  festering  scum,  the  stagnant 
edge  of  the  pool  effaces  itself  into  a  slope  of  black 
slime,  the  accumulation  of  indolent  years.  Half-a- 
dozen  men,  with  one  day's  work,  could  cleanse  those 
pools,  and  trim  the  flowers  about  their  banks,  and 
make  every  breath  of  summer  air  above  them  rich 
with  cool  balm ;  and  every  glittering  wave  medicinal, 
as  if  it  ran,  troubled  only  of  angels,  from  the  porcii 
of  Bethesda.  But  that  day's  work  is  never  given, 
nor,  I  suppose,  will  be ;  nor  will  any  joy  be  possible 
o  heart  of  man,  for  evermore,  about  those  wells  of 
English  waters. 

2 .  When  I  last  left  them ,  I  walked  up  slowly  through 
ihe  back  streets  of  Croydon,  from  the  old  church  to 
ihe  hospital ;  and,  just  on  the  left,  before  coming  up 
lo  the  crossing  of  the  High  Street,  there  was  a  new 
public-house  built.  And  the  front  of  it  was  built  in 
so  wise  manner,  that  a  recess  of  two  feet  was  left 
below  its  front  windows,  between  them  and  the  street- 
pavement  ;  a  recess  too  narrow  for  any  possible  use 
(for  even  if  it  had  been  occupied  by  a  seat,  as  In  old 
time  it  might  have  been,  everybody  walking  along 
the  street  would  have  fallen  over  the  legs  of  the  repos- 
ing wayfarer).  But,  by  way  of  making  this  two 
feet  depth  of  freehold  land  more  expressive  of  ths 
dignity  of  an  establishment  for  the  sale  of  spirituous 
liquors,  it  was  fenced  from  the  pavement  by  an  iui 
posing  iron  railing,  having  four  or  five  spearheads  to 
the  yard  of  it,  and  six  feet  high  ;  containing  as  much 
iron  and  iron-work,  indeed,  as  could  well  be  put 
into  the  space ;  and  by  this  stately  arrangement,  the 


6  INTRODUCTION. 

little  piece  of  dead  ground  within,  between  wall  and 
street,  became  a  protective  receptacle  of  refuse  ;  cigar 
ends,  and  oyster  shells,  and  the  like,  such  as  an  open- 
handed  English  street-populace  habitually  scatters ; 
and  was  thus  left,  unsweepable  by  any  ordinary 
methods.  Now  the  iron  bars  which,  uselessly  (or 
in  great  degree  worse  than  uselessly),  enclosed  this 
bit  of  ground,  and  made  it  pestilent,  represented  a 
quantity  of  work  which  would  have  cleansed  the 
Carshalton  pools  three  times  over:  of  work,  partly 
cramped  and  perilous,  in  the  mine ;  partly  grievous 
and  horrible,  at  the  furnace;  partly  foolish  and 
sedentary,  of  ill-taught  students  making  bad  designs  : 
work  from  the  beginning  to  the  last  fruits  of  it,  and 
in  all  the  branches  of  it,  venomous,  deathful,*  and 
miserable. 

3.  Now,  how  did  it  come  to  pass  that  this  work 
was  done  instead  of  the  other;  that  the  strength 

*  A  fearful  occurrence  took  place  a  few  days  since,  near  Wolver- 
hampton. Thomas  Snape,  aged  nineteen,  was  on  duty  as  the  "  keeper  " 
of  a  blast  furnace  at  Deepfield,  assisted  by  John  Gardner,  aged  eigh- 
teen, and  Joseph  Swift,  aged  thirty-seven.  The  furnace  contained 
four  tons  of  molten  iron,  and  an  equal  amount  of  cinders,  and  ought 
to  have  been  run  out  at  7.30  p.m.  But  Snape  and  his  mates,  engaged 
in  talking  and  drinking,  neglected  their  duty,  and,  in  the  meantime, 
the  iron  rose  in  the  furnace  until  it  reached  a  pipe  wherein  water  was 
contained.  Just  as  the  men  had  stripped,  and  were  proceeding  to  tap 
the  furnace,  the  water  in  the  pipe,  converted  into  steam,  burst  down 
its  front  and  let  loose  on  them  the  molten  metal,  which  instantaneously 
consumed  Gardner;  Snape,  terribly  burnt,  and  mad  with  pain,  leaped 
tnto  the  canal  and  then  ran  home  and  fell  dead  on  the  threshold.  Swift 
survived  to  reach  the  hospital,  where  he  died  too. 

In  further  illustration  of  this  matter,  I  beg  the  reader  to  look  at  the 
article  on  the  "  Decay  of  the  English  Race,"  in  the  Pall-Mali  Gazette 
of  April  17,  of  this  year;  and  at  the  articles  on  the  "Report  of  the 
Thames  Commission,"  in  any  journals  of  the  same  date. 


INTRO  D  UC  TION.  1 

and  life  of  the  English  operative  were  spent  in  defil« 
ing  ground,  instead  of  redeeming  it,  and  in  produ- 
cing an  entirely  (in  that  place)  valueless  piece  of 
metal,  which  can  neither  be  eaten  nor  breathed, 
instead  of  medicinal  fresh  air  and  pure  water? 

4.  There  is  but  one  reason  for  it,  and  at  present  a 
conclusive  one,  —  that  the  capitalist  can  charge  per- 
centage on  the  work  in  the  one  case,  and  cannot  in  the 
other.  If,  having  certain  funds  for  supporting  labor 
at  my  disposal,  I  pay  men  merely  to  keep  my  ground 
in  order,  my  money  is,  in  that  function,  spent  once 
for  all ;  but  if  I  pay  them  to  dig  iron  out  of  my  ground 
and  work  it,  and  sell  it,  I  can  charge  rent  for  the 
ground,  and  percentage  both  on  the  manufacture  and 
the  sale,  and  make  my  capital  profitable  in  these  three 
by-ways.  The  greater  part  of  the  profitable  invest- 
ment of  capital,  in  the  present  day,  is  in  operations 
of  this  kind,  in  which  the  public  is  persuaded  to  buy 
something  of  no  use  to  it,  on  production  or  sale  of 
which  the  capitalist  may  charge  percentage  ;  the  said 
public  remaining  all  the  while  under  the  persuasion 
that  the  percentages  thus  obtained  are  real  national 
gains,  whereas,  they  are  merely  filchings  out  of 
partially  light  pockets,  to  swell  heavy  ones. 

5.  Thus,  the  Croyden  publican  buys  the  iron  rail- 
ing, to  make  himself  more  conspicuous  to  drunkards. 
The  public-house  keeper  on  the  other  side  of  the  way 
presently  buys  another  railing,  to  out-rail  him  with. 
Both  are,  as  to  their  relative  attractiveness,  just  where 
they  were  before ;  but  they  have  lost  the  price  of  the 
railings ;  which  they  must  either  themselves  finally 
lose,  or  make  their  aforesaid  customers,  the  amateurs 


8  INTRODUCTION. 

of  railings,  pay,  by  raising  tlie  price  of  their  beer,  or 
adulterating  it.  Either  the  publicans,  or  their  cus- 
tomers, are  thus  poorer  by  precisely  what  the  capital- 
ist has  gained;  and  the  value  of  the  industry  itself, 
meantime,  has  been  lost  to  the  nation ;  the  iron  bars 
in  that  form  and  place  being  wholly  useless. 

6.  It  is  this  mode  of  taxation  of  the  poor  by  the 
rich  which  is  referred  to  in  the  text  (§  34),  in 
comparing  the  modern  acquisitive  power  of  capital 
with  that  of  the  lance  and  sword ;  the  only  difference 
being  that  the  levy  of  blackmail  in  old  times  was  by 
force,  and  is  now  by  cozening.  The  old  rider  and 
reiver  frankly  quartered  himself  on  the  publican  for 
the  night ;  —  the  modern  one  merely  makes  his  lance 
into  an  iron  spike,  and  persuades  his  host  to  buy  it. 
One  comes  as  an  open  robber,  the  other  as  a  cheating 
pedler ;  but-  the  result,  to  the  injured  person's  pocket, 
is  absolutely  the  same.  Of  course  many  useful 
industries  mingle  with,  and  disguise  the  useless  ones ; 
and  in  the  habits  of  energy  aroused  by  the  struggle, 
there  is  a  certain  direct  good.  It  is  better  to  spend 
four  thousand  pounds  in  making  a  gun,  and  then  to 
blow  it  to  pieces,  than  to  pass  life  in  idleness. 
Only  do  not  let  the  proceeding  be  called  "political 
economy." 

7.  There  is  also  a  confused  notion  in  the  minds 
of  many  persons,  that  the  gathering  of  the  prop- 
erty of  the  poor  into  the  hands  of  the  rich  does 
no  ultimate  harm ;  since,  in  whosesoever  hands  it 
may  be,  it  must  be  spent  at  last,  and  thus,  they  think, 
return  to  the  poor  again.  This  fallacy  has  been 
again  and  again  exposed ;  but  granting  the  plea  true, 


INTRODUCTION.  9 

the  same  apology  may,  of  course,  be  made  for  blade 
mail,  or  any  other  form  of  robbery.  It  might  be 
(though  practically  it  never  is)  as  advantageous  for 
the  nation  that  the  robber  should  have  the  spending 
of  the  money  he  extorts,  as  that  the  person  robbed 
should  have  spent  it.  But  this  is  no  excuse  for  the 
theft.  If  I  were  to  put  a  turnpike  on  the  road  where 
it  passes  my  own  gate,  and  endeavor  to  exact  a 
shilling  from  every  passenger,  the  public  would  soon 
do  away  with  my  gate,  without  listening  to  any  plea 
on  my  part  that  '  it  was  as  advantageous  to  them,  in 
the  end,  that  I  should  spend  their  shillings,  as  that 
they  themselves  should.'  But  if,  instead  of  out- 
facing them  with  a  turnpike,  I  can  only  persuade  there 
to  come  in  and  buy  stones,  or  old  iron,  or  any  other 
useless  thing,  out  of  my  ground,  I  may  rob  them  to 
the  same  extent,  and  be,  moreover,  thanked  as  a 
public  benefactor,  and  promoter  of  commercial  pros- 
perity. And  this  main  question  for  the  poor  of 
England  —  for  the  poor  of  all  countries  —  is  wholly 
omitted  in  every  common  treatise  on  the  subject  of 
wealth.  Even  by  the  laborers  themselves,  the  opera- 
tion of  capital  is  regarded  only  in  its  effect  on  their 
immediate  interests ;  never  in  the  far  more  terrific 
power  of  its  appointment  of  the  kind  and  the  object 
of  labor.  It  matters  little,  ultimately,  how  much  a 
laborer  is  paid  for  making  anything ;  but  it  matters 
fearfully  what  the  thing  is,  which  he  is  compelled  to 
make.  If  his  labor  is  so  ordered  as  to  produce  food, 
and  fresh  air,  and  fresh  water,  no  matter  that  his 
wages  are  low;  —  the  food  and  fresh  air  and  water 
will  be  at  last  there ;  and  he  will  at  last  get  them 


lO  INTRODUCTION. 

But  if  he  is  paid  to  destroy  food  and  fresh  air,  or  to 
produce  iron  bars  instead  of  thera,  —  the  food  and 
air  will  finally  not  be  there,  and  he  will  not  get  them, 
to  his  great  and  final  inconvenience. 

8.  I  have  been  long  accustomed,  as  all  men  engaged 
in  work  of  investigation  must  be,  to  hear  my  state- 
ments laughed  at  for  years  before  they  are  examined 
or  believed ;  and  I  am  generally  content  to  wait  the 
public's  time.  But  it  has  not  been  without  displeased 
surprise  that  I  have  found  myself  totally  unable,  as 
yet,  by  any  repetition,  or  illustration,  to  force  this 
plain  thought  into  my  readers'  heads,  —  that  the 
wealth  of  nations,  as  of  men,  consists  in  substance, 
not  in  ciphers ;  and  that  the  real  good  of  all  work, 
and  of  all  commerce,  depends  on  the  final  intrinsic 
worth  of  the  thing  you  make,  or  get  by  it.  This  is  a 
"  practical  "  enough  statement,  one  would  think  :  but 
the  English  public  has  been  so  possessed  by  its 
modern  school  of  economists  with  the  notion  that 
Business  is  always  good,  whether  it  be  busy  in  mis- 
chief or  in  benefit ;  and  that  buying  and  selling  are 
always  salutary,  whatever  the  intrinsic  worth  of  what 
you  buy  or  sell,  that  it  seems  impossible  to  gain  so 
much  as  a  patient  hearing  for  any  inquiry  respecting 
the  substantial  result  of  our  eager  modern  labor. 

9.  I  have  never  felt  more  checked  by  the  sense  of 
this  impossibiUty  than  in  arranging  the  heads  of  the 
following  lectures,  which,  though  delivered  at  con- 
siderable intervals  of  time,  and  in  different  places, 
were  not  prepared  without  reference  to  each  other. 
Their  connection  would,  however,  have  been  made 
fiar  more  distinct,  if  I  had  not  been  prevented,  by 


INTRODUCTION.  II 

what  I  feel  to  be  another  great  difficulty  in  addresS' 
ing  English  audiences,  from  enforcing,  with  any 
decision,  the  common,  and  to  me  the  most  important, 
part  of  their  subjects.  I  chiefly  desired  to  question 
my  hearers  —  operatives,   merchants,   and  soldiers, 

—  as  to  the  ultimate  meaning  of  the  business  they 
had  in  hand ;  and  to  know  from  them  what  they 
expected  or  intended  their  manufacture  to  come  to, 
their  selling  to  come  to,  and  their  killing  to  come 
to.  That  appeared  the  first  point  needing  deter- 
mination before  I  could  speak  to  them  with  any 
real  utility  or  effect.      "You  craftsmen  —  salesmen 

—  swordsmen,  —  do  but  tell  me  clearly  what  you 
want ;  then,  if  I  can  say  anything  to  help  you,  I 
will ;  and  if  not,  I  will  account  to  you  as  I  best  may 
for  my  inability." 

ID.  But  in  order  to  put  this  question  into  any  terms, 
one  had  first  of  all  to  face  the  difficulty  —  to  me  for 
the  present  insuperable,  —  the  difficulty  of  knowing 
whether  to  address  one's  audience  as  believing,  or 
not  believing,  in  any  other  world  than  this.  For  if 
you  address  any  average  modern  English  company 
as  believing  in  an  Eternal  life,  and  then  endeavor  to 
draw  any  conclusions,  from  this  assumed  belief,  as 
to  their  present  business,  they  will  forthwith  tell  you 
that  "  what  you  say  is  very  beautiful,  but  it  is  not  prac- 
tical." If,  on  the  contrary,  you  frankly  address  them 
as  ««believers  in  Eternal  life,  and  try  to  draw  any 
consequences  from  that  unbelief,  —  they  immediately 
hold  you  for  an  accursed  person,  and  shake  off  the 
dust  from  their  feet  at  you. 

II.   And  the  more  I  thought  over  what  I  had  gof 


12  INTRODUCTION. 

to  say,  the  less  I  found  I  could  say  it,  without  some 
reference  to  this  intangible  or  intractable  question. 
It  made  all  the  difference,  in  asserting  any  principle 
of  war,  whether  one  assumed  that  a  discharge  of 
artillery  would  merely  knead  down  a  certain  quantity 
of  once  living  clay  into  a  level  line,  as  in  a  brick- 
field ;  or  whether,  out  of  every  separately  Christian- 
named  portion  of  the  ruinous  heap,  there  .vent  out, 
into  the  smoke  and  dead-fallen  air  of  battle,  some 
astonished  condition  of  soul,  unwillingly  released. 
It  made  all  the  difference,  in  speaking  of  the  possible 
range  of  commerce,  whether  one  assumed  that  all 
bargains  related  only  to  visible  property —  or  whether 
property,  for  the  present  invisible,  but  nevertheless 
real,  was  elsewhere  purchasable  on  other  terms.  It 
made  all  the  difference,  in  addressing  a  body  of  men 
subject  to  considerable  hardship,  and  having  to  find 
some  way  out  of  it  —  whether  one  could  confidently 
say  to  them,  "My  friends, — you  have  only  to  die, 
and  all  will  be  right ;  "  or  whether  one  had  any  secret 
misgiving  that  such  advice  was  more  blessed  to  him 
that  gave,  than  to  him  that  took  it. 

12.  And  therefore  the  deliberate  reader  will  find, 
throughout  these  lectures,  a  hesitation  in  driving 
points  home,  and  a  pausing  short  of  conclusions 
which  he  will  feel  I  would  fain  have  come  to ;  — 
hesitation  which  arises  wholly  from  this  uncertainty 
of  my  hearers'  temper.  For  I  do  not  speak,  nor 
have  I  ever  spoken,  since  the  time  of  first  forward 
youth,  in  any  proselyting  temper,  as  desiring  to  per- 
suade any  one  to  believe  anything ;  but  whomsoever 
1  venture  to  address,  1  take  for  the  time  his  creed  as 


INTRODUCTION.  13 

/  find  it,  and  endeavor  to  push  it  into  such  vital  fruit 
as  it  seems  capable  of.  Thus,  it  is  a  creed  with  a 
great  part  of  the  existing  English  people,  that  they 
are  in  possession  of  a  book  which  tells  them,  straight 
from  the  lips  of  God,  all  they  ought  to  do,  and  need 
to  know.  I  have  read  that  book,  with  as  much  care 
as  most  of  them,  for  some  forty  years ;  and  ara 
thankful  that,  on  those  who  trust  it,  I  can  press  its 
pleadings.  My  endeavor  has  been  uniformly  to  make 
them  trust  it  more  deeply  than  they  do ;  trust  it,  no'- 
in  their  own  favorite  verses  only,  but  in  the  sum  o 
all ;  trust  it  not  as  a  fetish  or  talisman,  which  thej 
are  to  be  saved  by  daily  repetitions  of;  but  as  a 
Captain's  order,  to  be  heard  and  obeyed  at  theL* 
peril.  I  was  always  encouraged  by  supposing  my 
hearers  to  hold  such  belief.  To  these,  if  to  any,  T 
once  had  hope  of  addressing,  with  acceptance,  words 
which  insisted  on  the  guilt  of  pride,  and  the  futility 
of  avarice ;  from  these,  if  from  any,  I  once  expected 
ratification  of  a  political  economy,  which  asserted 
that  the  life  was  more  than  the  meat,  and  the  body 
than  raiment;  and  these,  it  once  seemed  to  me, 
I  might  ask,  without  being  accused  of  fanaticism, 
not  merely  in  doctrine  of  the  lips,  but  in  the  bestowal 
of  their  heart's  treasure,  to  separate  themselves  from 
the  crowd  of  whom  it  is  written,  "After  all  these 
things  do  the  Gentiles  seek." 

13.  It  cannot,  however,  be  assumed,  with  any  sem- 
blance of  reason,  that  a  general  audience  is  now 
wholly,  or  even  in  majority,  composed  of  these  reli- 
gious persons.  A  large  portion  must  always  consist 
of  men  who  admit  no  such  creed ;  or  who,  at  least, 


14  INTRODUCTION. 

are  inaccessible  to  appeals  founded  on  it.  And  as, 
with  the  so-called  Christian,  I  desired  to  plead  for 
bonest  declaration  and  fulfilment  of  his  belief  in  life, 
—with  the  so-called  Infidel,  I  desired  to  plead  for  an 
honest  declaration  and  fulfilment  of  his  belief  in 
death.  The  dilemma  is  inevitable.  Men  must  either 
hereafter  live,  or  hereafter  die ;  fate  may  be  bravely 
met,  and  conduct  wisely  ordered,  on  either  expecta- 
tion ;  but  never  in  hesitation  between  ungrasped 
hope,  and  unconfronted  fear.  We  usually  believe  in 
immortality,  so  far  as  to  avoid  preparation  for  death ; 
and  in  mortality,  so  far  as  to  avoid  preparation  for 
anything  after  death.  Whereas,  a  wise  man  will  at 
least  hold  himself  ready  for  one  or  other  of  two 
events,  of  which  one  or  other  is  inevitable ;  and  will 
have  all  things  ended  in  order  for  his  sleep,  or  left 
in  order  for  his  awakening. 

14.  Nor  have  we  any  right  to  call  it  an  ignoble 
judgment,  if  he  determine  to  end  them  in  order,  as 
for  sleep.  A  brave  belief  in  life  is  indeed  an  enviable 
state  of  mind,  but,  as  far  as  I  can  discern,  an  unusual 
one.  I  know  few  Christians  so  convinced  of  the  splen- 
dor of  the  rooms  in  their  Father's  house,  as  to  be  hap- 
pier when  their  friends  are  called  to  those  mansions, 
than  they  would  have  been  if  the  Queen  had  sent  for 
them  to  live  at  court :  nor  has  the  Church's  most  ardent 
"  desire  to  depart,  and  be  with  Christ,"  ever  cured  it 
cf  the  singular  habit  of  putting  on  mourning  for 
every  person  summoned  to  such  departure.  On  the 
contrary,  a  brave  belief  in  death  has  been  assuredly 
held  by  many  not  ignoble  persons,  and  it  is  a  sign 
of  the  last  depravity  in  the  Church  itself,  when  it 


INTRODUCTION.  15 

assumes  that  such  a  belief  is  inconsistent  with  either 
purity  of  character,  or  energy  of  hand.  The  shorty 
ness  of  life  is  not,  to  any  rational  person,  a  conclusive 
reason  for  wasting  the  space  of  it  which  may  be 
granted  him ;  nor  does  the  anticipation  of  death  to- 
morrow suggest,  to  any  one  but  a  drunkard,  the  ex- 
pediency of  drunkenness  to-day.  To  teach  that  there 
is  no  device  in  the  grave,  may  indeed  make  the  de- 
viceless  person  more  contented  in  his  dulness ;  but 
it  will  make  the  deviser  only  more  earnest  in  devising ; 
nor  is  human  conduct  likely,  in  every  case,  to  be 
purer,  under  the  conviction  that  all  its  evil  may  in 
a  moment  be  pardoned,  and  all  its  wrong-doing  in  a 
moment  redeemed ;  and  that  the  sigh  of  repentance, 
which  purges  the  guilt  of  the  past,  will  waft  the  soul 
into  a  felicity  which  forgets  its  pain,  —  than  it  may  be 
under  the  sterner,  and  to  many  not  unwise  minds, 
more  probable,  apprehension,  that  "  what  a  man  sow- 
eth  that  shall  he  also  reap  "  —  or  others  reap,  —  when 
he,  the  living  seed  of  pestilence,  walketh  no  more  in 
darkness,  but  lies  down  therein. 

15.  But  to  men  for  whom  feebleness  of  sight,  or 
bitterness  of  soul,  or  the  offence  given  by  the  conduct 
of  those  who  claim  higher  hope,  may  have  rendered 
this  painful  creed  the  only  possible  one,  there  is  an 
appeal  to  be  made,  more  secure  than  any  which  can  be 
addressed  to  happier  persons.  Might  not  a  preacher, 
in  comfortless  but  faithful  zeal  —  from  the  poor  height 
of  a  grave-hillock  for  his  Hill  of  Mars,  and  with  the 
Cave  of  the  Eumenides  at  his  side  —  say  to  them : 
Hear  me,  you  dying  men,  who  will  soon  be  deaf  for- 
ever.    For  these  others,  at  your  right  hand  and  your 


1 6  INTRODUCTION. 

eft,  who  look  forward  to  a  state  of  infinite  existence, 
n  which  all  their  errors  will  be  overruled,  and  all 
their  faults  forgiven ;  —  for  these,  who,  stained  and 
blackened  in  the  battle  smoke  of  mortality,  have  but 
to  dip  themselves  for  an  instant  in  the  font  of  death, 
and  to  rise  renewed  of  plumage,  as  a  dove  that  is 
covered  with  silver,  and  her  feathers  like  gold  :  —  for 
these,  indeed,  it  may  be  permissible  to  waste  their 
numbered  moments,  through  faith  in  a  future  of  in- 
numerable hours ;  to  these,  in  their  weakness,  it 
may  be  conceded  that  they  should  tamper  with  sin 
which  can  only  bring  forth  fruit  of  righteousness, 
and  profit  by  the  iniquity  which,  one  day,  will  be 
remembered  no  more.  In  them,  it  may  be  no  sign 
of  hardness  of  heart  to  neglect  the  poor,  over  whom 
they  know  their  Master  is  watching;  and  to  leave 
those  to  perish  temporarily,  who  cannot  perish  eter- 
nally. But,  for  you,  there  is  no  such  hope,  and 
therefore  no  such  excuse.  This  fate,  which  you 
ordain  for  the  wretched,  you  believe  to  be  all  their 
inheritance ;  you  may  crush  them,  before  the  moth, 
and  they  will  never  rise  to  rebuke  you;  —  their 
breath,  which  fails  for  lack  of  food,  once  expiring, 
will  never  be  recalled  to  whisper  against  you  a  word 
of  accusing  ;  —  they  and  you,  as  you  think,  shall  lie 
down  together  in  the  dust,  and  the  worms  cover  you ; 
and  for  them  there  shall  be  no  consolation,  and 
on  you  no  vengeance,  —  only  the  question  murmured 
above  your  grave:  "Who  shall  repay  him  what  he 
hath  done  ? "  Is  it  therefore  easier  for  you  in  your 
heart  to  inflict  the  sorrow  for  which  there  is  no 
remedy?    Will  you  take,  wantonly,  this  little  all  of 


INTRODUCTION.  1 7 

ills  life  from  your  poor  brother,  and  make  his  brief 
hours  long  to  him  with  pain?  Will  you  be  more 
prompt  to  the  injustice  which  can  never  be  redressed ; 
and  more  niggardly  of  the  mercy  which  you  can  bestow 
but  once,  and  which,  refusing,  you  refuse  forever  ? 

i6.  I  think  better  of  you,  even  of  the  most  selfish, 
than  that  you  would  do  this,  well  understanding  your 
act.  And  for  yourselves,  it  seems  to  me,  the  ques- 
tion becomes  not  less  grave  when  brought  into  these 
airt  limits.  If  your  life  were  but  a  fever  fit,  — 
.he  madness  of  a  night,  whose  follies  were  all  to 
be  forgotten  in  the  dawn,  it  might  matter  little  how 
you  fretted  away  the  sickly  hours,  —  what  toys  you 
snatched  at,  or  let  fall,  —  what  visions  you  followed 
wistfully  with  the  deceived  eyes  of  sleepless  frenzy. 
Is  the  earth  only  an  hospital  ?  are  health  and  heaven 
to  come?  Then  play,  if  you  care  to  play,  on  the 
floor  of  the  hospital  dens.  Knit  its  straw  into 
what  crowns  please  you ;  gather  the  dust  of  it  for 
treasure,  and  die  rich  in  that,  though  clutching  at 
the  black  motes  in  the  air  with  your  dying  hands  ;  — 
and  yet,  it  may  be  well  with  you.  But  if  this 
life  be  no  dream,  and  the  world  no  hospital,  but 
your  Palace-inheritance ;  —  if  all  the  peace  and 
power  and  joy  you  can  ever  win,  must  be  won 
now,  and  all  fruit  of  victory  gathered  here,  or 
never ;  —  will  you  still,  throughout  the  puny  totality 
of  your  life,  weary  yourselves  in  the  fire  for  vanity? 
If  there  is  no  rest  which  remaineth  for  you,  is  there 
none  you  might  presently  take?  was  this  grass 
of  the  earth  made  green  for  your  shroud  only,  not 
for  your  bed?  and  can  you  never  lie  down  upon  it, 


l8  INTRODUCTION. 

but  oniy  under  it?  The  heathen,  in  their  sad- 
dest hours,  thought  not  so.  They  knew  that  life 
brought  its  contest,  but  they  expected  from  it  also 
the  crown  of  all  contest :  No  proud  one !  no  jew- 
elled circlet  flaming  through  Heaven  above  the 
height  of  the  unmerited  throne ;  only  some  few 
leaves  of  wild  olive,  cool  to  the  tired  brow,  through 
a  few  years  of  peace.  It  should  have  been  of  gold, 
they  thought ;  but  Jupiter  was  poor ;  this  was  the  • 
best  the  god  could  give  them.  Seeking  a  better 
than  this,  they  had  known  it  a  mockery.  Not  in 
war,  not  in  wealth,  not  in  tyranny,  was  there  any 
happiness  to  be  found  for  them  —  only  in  kindly 
peace,  fruitful  and  free.  The  wreath  was  to  be  of 
vfild  olive,  mark  you :  —  the  tree  that  grows  care- 
lessly, tufting  the  rocks  with  no  vivid  bloom,  no  ver- 
dure of  branch ;  only  with  soft  snow  of  blossom,  and 
scarcely  fulfilled  fhiit,  mixed  with  gray  leaf  and 
thornset  stem ;  no  fastening  of  diadem  for  you  but 
with  such  sharp  embroidery !  But  this,  such  as  it  is, 
you  may  win  while  yet  you  live ;  type  of  gray  honor 
and  sweet  rest.*  Free-heartedness,  and  gracious- 
ness,  and  undisturbed  trust,  and  requited  love,  and 
the  sight  of  the  peace  of  others,  and  the  ministry  to 
their  pain ;  —  these,  and  the  blue  sky  above  you,  and 
the  sweet  waters  and  flowers  of  the  earth  beneath ; 
and  mysteries  and  presences,  innumerable,  of  living 
things,  —  may  yet  be  here  your  riches  ;  untorment- 
ing  and  divine :  serviceable  for  the  life  that  now  is  \ 
nor,  it  may  be,  without  promise  of  that  which  is  to 
come. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE  I. 

rAGB 

Work ai 


LECTURE  II. 
Traffic 57 

LECTURE  nL 
War 89 

LECTURE  IV. 
The  Futvre  of  England     .        .        .        •      131 

Appendix 157 

»9 


LECTURE   I. 

WORK, 


LECTURE  I. 
WORK. 

Delivered  before  the   Working  Men's  Institute,  at 
Camberwell. 

%  17.  My  Friends,  —  I  have  not  come  among  you 
to-night  to  endeavor  to  give  you  an  entertaining  lec- 
ture ;  but  to  tell  you  a  few  plain  facts,  and  ask  you 
a  few  plain  questions.  I  have  seen  and  known  too 
much  of  the  struggle  for  life  among  our  laboring 
population,  to  feel  at  ease,  under  any  circumstances, 
in  inviting  them  to  dwell  on  the  trivialities  of  my  own 
studies ;  but,  much  more,  as  I  meet  to-night,  for  the 
first  time,  the  members  of  a  working  Institute  estab- 
lished in  the  district  in  which  I  have  passed  the 
greater  part  of  my  life,  I  am  desirous  that  we  should 
at  once  understand  each  other,  on  graver  matters. 
I  would  fain  tell  you,  with  what  feelings,  and  with 
what  hope,  I  regard  this  Institute,  as  one  of  many 
such,  now  happily  established  throughout  England, 
as  well  as  in  other  countries ;  and  preparing  the  way 
for  a  great  change  in  all  the  circumstances  of  indus- 
trial life ;  but  of  which  the  success  must  wholly  depend 
upon  our  clearly  understanding  the  conditions,  and 
above  all,  the  necessary  limits  of  this  change.  No 
teacher  can  truly  promote  the  cause   of  education, 

23 


24  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE 

until  he  knows  the  mode  of  life  for  which  that  eau- 
cation  is  to  prepare  his  pupil.  And  the  fact  that 
he  is  called  upon  to  address  you,  nominally,  as  a 
"  Working  Class,"  must  compel  him,  if  he  is  in  any 
wise  earnest  or  thoughtful,  to  inquire  in  the  outset, 
on  what  you  yourselves  suppose  this  class  distinction 
has  been  founded  in  the  past,  and  must  be  founded 
in  the  future.  The  manner  of  the  amusement,  and 
the  matter  of  the  teaching,  which  any  of  us  can  offer 
you,  must  depend  wholly  on  our  first  understanding 
from  you,  whether  you  think  the  distinction  hereto- 
fore drawn  between  working  men  and  others  is  truly 
or  falsely  founded.  Do  you  accept  it  as  it  stands  ? 
do  you  wish  it  to  be  modified  ?  or  do  you  think  the 
object  of  education  is  to  eflface  it,  and  make  us  forge 
it  forever  ? 

§  1 8.  Let  me  make  myself  more  distinctly  under 
stood.  We  call  this  —  you  and  I  —  a  "Working 
Men's"  Institute,  and  our  college  in  London,  a 
"  Working  Men's  "  College.  Now,  how  do  you  con- 
sider that  these  several  institutes  differ,  or  ought  to 
differ,  from  "  idle  men's  "  institutes  and  "  idle  men's  " 
colleges  ?  Or  by  what  other  word  than  "  idle"  shall 
I  distinguish  those  whom  the  happiest  and  wisest  of 
working  men  do  not  object  to  call  the  "  Upper 
Classes "  ?  Are  there  necessarily  upper  classes  ? 
necessarily  lower  ?  How  much  should  those  always 
be  elevated,  how  much  these  always  depressed  ? 
And  I  pray  those  among  my  audience  who  chance  to 
occupy,  at  present,  the  higher  position,  to  forgive  me 
what  offence  there  may  be  in  what  I  am  going  to  say. 
It  is  not  /  who  wish  to  say  it.     Bitter  voices  say  it ; 


WORK.  25 

voices  of  battle  and  of  famine  through  all  the  world, 
which  must  be  heard  some  day,  whoever  keeps  silence 
Neither,  as  you  well  know,  is  it  to  you  specially  that 
1  say  it.  I  am  sure  that  most  now  present  know  their 
duties  of  kindness,  and  fulfil  them,  better  perhaps 
than  I  do  mine.  But  I  speak  to  you  as  representing 
your  whole  class,  which  errs,  I  know,  chiefly  by 
thoughtlessness,  but  not  therefore  the  less  terribly. 
Wilful  error  is  limited  by  the  will,  but  what  limit  is 
there  to  that  of  which  we  are  unconscious  ? 

§  19.  Bear  with  me,  therefore,  while  I  turn  to  these 
workmen,  and  ask  them  what  they  think  the  "  upper 
classes  "  are,  and  ought  to  be,  in  relation  to  them. 
Answer,  you  workmen  who  are  here,  as  you  would 
among  yourselves,  frankly;  and  tell  me  how  you 
would  have  me  call  your  employers.  Am  I  to  call 
them  —  would  you  think  me  right  in  calling  them  — 
the  idle  classes  ?  I  think  you  would  feel  somewha 
uneasy,  and  as  if  I  were  not  treating  my  subjec. 
honestly,  or  speaking  from  my  heart,  if  I  proceeded 
in  my  lecture  under  the  supposition  that  all  rich 
people  were  idle.  You  would  be  both  unjust  and 
unwise  if  you  allowed  me  to  say  that ;  —  not  less  un- 
just than  the  rich  people  who  say  that  all  the  poor 
are  idle,  and  will  never  work  if  they  can  help  it,  or 
more  than  they  can  help. 

§  30.*  For  indeed  the  fact  is,  that  there  are  idle 
poor  and  idle  rich  ;  and  there  are  busy  poor  and  busy 
rich.    Many  a  beggar  is  as  lazy  as  if  he  had  ten  thou- 

*  Note  this  paragraph.  I  cannot  enough  wonder  at  the  want  of 
common  charity  which  bhnds  so  many  people  to  the  quite  simple  truth 
to  which  It  refers. 


26  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

sand  a  year ;  and  many  a  man  of  large  fortune  is  busier 
than  his  errand-boy,  and  never  would  think  of  stop- 
ping in  the  street  to  play  marbles.  So  that,  in  a  large 
view,  the  distinction  between  workers  and  idlers,  as 
between  knaves  and  honest  men,  runs  through  the 
very  heart  and  innermost  nature  of  men  of  all  ranks 
and  in  all  positions.  There  is  a  working  class  — 
strong  and  happy,  —  among  both  rich  and  poor ;  there 
is  an  idle  class  —  weak,  wicked,  and  miserable,  — 
among  both  rich  and  poor.  And  the  worst  of  the 
misunderstandings  arising  between  the  two  orders 
come  of  the  unlucky  fact  that  the  wise  of  one  class 
[how  little  wise  in  this !]  habitually  contemplate  the 
foolish  of  the  other.  If  the  busy  rich  people  watched 
and  rebuked  the  idle  rich  people,  all  would  be  right 
among  them :  and  if  the  busy  poor  people  watched 
and  rebuked  the  idle  poor  people,  all  would  be  right 
among  them.  But  each  looks  for  the  faults  of  the 
other.  A  hardworking  man  of  property  is  particu- 
larly offended  by  an  idle  beggar;  and  an  orderly, 
but  poor,  workman  is  naturally  intolerant  of  the 
licentious  luxury  of  the  rich.  And  what  is  severe 
judgment  in  the  minds  of  the  just  men  of  either  class, 
becomes  fierce  enmity  in  the  unjust  —  but  among  the 
unjust  only.  None  but  the  dissolute  among  the  poor 
look  upon  the  rich  as  their  natural  enemies,  or  desire 
to  pillage  their  houses  and  divide  their  property. 
None  but  the  dissolute  among  the  rich  speak  in 
opprobrious  terms  of  the  vices  and  follies  of  the  poor. 
§  21.  There  is,  then,  no  worldly  distinction  be- 
tween idle  and  industrious  people ;  and  I  am  going 
to-night  to  speak  only  of  the  industrious.    The  idle 


woRx:  a  7 

people  we  will  put  out  of  our  thoughts  at  once  —  they 
are  mere  nuisances  —  what  ought  to  be  done  with 
iAem,  we'll  talk  of  at  another  time.  But  there  are 
class  distinctions  among  the  industrious  themselves ; 
—  tremendous  distinctions,  which  rise  and  fall  to 
every  degree  in  the  infinite  thermometer  of  human 
pain  and  of  human  power,  —  distinctions  of  high  and 
low,  of  lost  and  won,  to  the  whole  reach  of  man's 
soul  and  body. 

§  22.  These  separations  we  will  study,  and  the 
laws  of  them,  among  energetic  men  only,  who, 
whether  they  work  or  whether  they  play,  put  their 
strength  into  the  work,  and  their  strength  into  the 
game;  being  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word  "indus- 
trious," one  way  or  another,  —  with  purpose,  or  with- 
out.    And  these  distinctions  are  mainly  four :  — 

I.  Between  those  who  work,  and  those  who  play. 

II.  Between  those  who  produce  the  means  of  life, 
and  those  who  consume  them. 

III.  Between  those  who  work  with  the  head,  and 
those  who  work  with  the  hand. 

IV.  Between  those  who  work  wisely,  and  those 
who  work  foolishly. 

For  easier  memory,  let  us  say  we  are  going  to  op- 
pose, in  our  examination,  — 
I.  Work  to  play; 
II.  Production  to  consumption ; 

III.  Head  to  hand;  and, 

IV.  Sense  to  nonsense. 

§  23.  I.  First,  then,  of  the  distinction  between 
the  classes  who  work  and  the  classes  who  play.  Of 
course   we   must  agree   upon  a  definition  of  these 


28  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

terms,  —  work  and  play,  —  before  going  farther 
Now,  roughly,  not  with  vain  subtlety  of  definition, 
but  for  plain  use  of  the  words,  " play"  is  an  exertion 
of  body  or  mind,  made  to  please  ourselves,  and  with 
no  determined  end;  and  work  is  a  thing  done  be- 
cause it  ought  to  be  done,  and  with  a  determined  end. 
You  play,  as  you  call  it,  at  cricket,  for  instance.  That 
is  as  hard  work  as  anything  else ;  but  it  amuses  you, 
and  it  has  no  result  but  the  amusement.  If  it  were 
done  as  an  ordered  form  of  exercise,  for  health's  sake, 
it  would  become  work  directly.  So,  in  like  manner, 
whatever  we  do  to  please  ourselves,  and  only  for  the 
sake  of  the  pleasure,  not  for  an  ultimate  object,  is 
"play,"  the  "pleasing  thing,"  not  the  useful  thing, 
play  may  be  useful  in  a  secondary  sense  (nothing  is 
..ndeed  more  useful  or  necessary)  ;  but  the  use  of  it 
depends  on  its  being  spontaneous. 

§  24.  Let  us,  then,  inquire  together  what  sort  of 
games  the  playing  class  in  England  spend  their  lives 
in  playing  at. 

The  first  of  all  English  games  is  making  money. 
That  is  an  all-absorbing  game ;  and  we  knock  each 
other  down  oftener  in  playing  at  that  than  at  foot- 
ball, or  any  other  roughest  sport ;  and  it  is  absolutely 
without  purpose ;  no  one  who  engages  heartily  in 
that  game  ever  knows  why.  Ask  a  great  money- 
maker what  he  wants  to  do  with  his  money  —  he 
never  knows.  He  doesn't  make  it  to  do  anything 
with  it.  He  gets  it  only  that  he  may  get  it.  "  What 
will  you  make  of  what  you  have  got  ? "  you  ask. 
"  Well,  I'll  get  more,"  he  says.  Just  as,  at  cricket, 
you  get  more  runs.     There's  no  use  in  the  runs,  but 


WORK.  89 

to  get  more  of  them  than  other  people  is  the  game. 
And  there's  no  use  in  the  money,  but  to  have  more 
of  it  than  other  people  is  the  game.  So  all  that 
great  foul  city  of  London  there,  —  rattling,  growling, 
smoking,  stinking,  —  a  ghastly  heap  of  fermenting 
brickwork,  pouring  out  poison  at  every  pore,  —  you 
fancy  it  is  a  city  of  work?  Not  a  street  of  it !  It  is 
a  great  city  of  play ;  very  nasty  play,  and  very  hard 
play,  but  still  play.  It  is  only  Lord's  cricket  ground 
without  the  turf,  —  a  huge  billiard  table  without  th? 
cloth,  and  with  pockets  as  deep  as  the  bottomless  pit; 
but  mainly  a  billiard  table,  after  all. 

§  25.  Well,  the  first  great  English  game  is  this 
playing  at  counters.  It  differs  from  the  rest  in  that  it 
appears  always  to  be  producing  money,  while  every 
other  game  is  expensive.  But  it  does  not  always 
produce  money.  There's  a  great  difference  between 
"  winning"  money  and  "  making"  it ;  a  great  differ- 
ence between  getting  it  out  of  another  man's  pocket 
into  ours,  or  filling  both. 

§  26.  Our  next  great  English  games,  however, 
hunting  and  shooting,  are  costly  altogether ;  and  how 
much  we  are  fined  for  them  annually  in  land,  horses, 
gamekeepers,  and  game  laws,  and  the  resultant  de- 
moralization of  ourselves,  our  children,  and  our  retain- 
ers, and  all  else  that  accompanies  that  beautiful  and 
special  English  game,  I  will  not  endeavor  to  count 
now  :  but  note  only  that,  except  for  exercise,  this  is 
not  merely  a  useless  game,  but  a  deadly  one,  to  all 
connected  with  it.  For  through  horse-racing,  you 
get  every  form  of  what  the  higher  classes  everywhere 
call  •♦  Play,"  in  distinction  from  all  other  plays  ;  that 


30  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD    OLIVE. 

js,  gambling ;  and  through  game-preserving,  you  get 
also  some  curious  laying  out  of  ground ;  that  beau- 
tiful arrangement  of  dwelling-house  for  man  and 
beast,  by  which  we  have  grouse  and  black-cock  — 
so  many  brace  to  the  acre,  and   men  and  women 

—  so  many  brace  to  the  garret.  I  often  wonder  what 
the  angelic  builders  and  surveyors  —  the  angelic 
builders  who  build  the  "  many  mansions"  up  above 
there ;  and  the  angelic  surveyors,  who  measured 
that  four-square  city  with  their  measuring  reeds  — 
I  wonder  what  they  think,  or  are  supposed  to  think, 
of  the  laying  out  of  ground  by  this  nation.* 

§  27.  Then,  next  to  the  gentlemen's  game  of  hunt- 
ing, we  must  put  the  ladies'  game  of  dressing.  It  is 
not  the  cheapest  of  games.  And  I  wish  I  could  tell 
you  what  this  "play"  costs,  altogether,  in  England, 
France,  and  Russia  annually.  But  it  is  a  pretty  game, 
and  on  certain  terms  I  like  it;  nay,  I  don't  see  it 
played  quite  as  much  as  I  would  fain  have  it.  You 
ladies  like  to  lead  the  fashion :  —  by  all  means  lead  it 

—  lead  it  thoroughly,  —  lead  it  far  enough.  Dress 
yourselves  nicely,  and  dress  everybody  else  nicely. 
Lead  \ht.  fashions  for  the  poor  first ;  make  them  look 
well,  and  you  yourselves  will  look,  in  ways  of  which 
you  have  now  no  conception,  all  the  better.  The 
fashions  you  have  set  for  some  time  among  your 
peasantry  are  not  pretty  ones  ;  their  doublets  are  too 
irregularly  slashed,   or  as  Chaucer  calls  it  "all  to- 

♦  The  subject  is  pursued  at  some  length  in  Fors  Clavigera  for 
March,  1873  ;  but  I  have  not  yet  properly  stated  the  opposite  side  of 
the  question  nor  insisted  on  the  value  of  uncultivated  land  to  the 
national  health  of  body  and  mind. 


WORK.  31 

slittered,"  though  not  for  "  queintise,"  and  the  wind 
blows  too  frankly  through  them. 

§  28.  Then  there  are  other  games,  wild  enough,  as 
I  could  show  you  if  I  had  time. 

There's  playing  at  literature,  and  playing  at  art ;  — 
very  different,  both,  from  working  at  literature,  or 
working  at  art,  but  I've  no  time  to  speak  of  these.  I 
pass  to  the  greatest  of  all  —  the  play  of  plays,  the 
great  gentlemen's  game,  which  ladies  like  them  best 
to  play  at,  —  the  game  of  War.  It  is  entrancingly 
pleasant  to  the  imagination ;  we  dress  for  it,  how- 
ever, more  finely  than  for  any  other  sport ;  and  go 
out  to  it,  not  merely  in  scarlet,  as  to  hunt,  but  in 
scarlet  and  gold,  and  all  manner  of  fine  colors ;  of 
course  we  could  fight  better  in  gray,  and  without 
feathers ;  but  all  nations  have  agreed  that  it  is  good 
to  be  well  dressed  at  this  play.  Then  the  bats  and 
balls  are  very  costly ;  our  English  and  French  bats, 
with  the  balls  and  wickets,  even  those  which  we 
don't  make  any  use  of,  costing,  I  suppose,  now, 
about  fifteen  millions  of  money  annually  to  each 
nation ;  all  which  you  know  is  paid  for  by  hard 
laborer's  work  in  the  furrow  and  furnace.  A  costly 
game  !  —  not  to  speak  of  its  consequences  ;  I  will  say 
at  present  nothing  of  these.  The  mere  immediate 
cost  of  all  these  plays  is  what  I  want  you  to  con- 
sider; they  are  all  paid  for  in  deadly  work  some- 
where, as  many  of  us  know  too  well.  The  jewel- 
cutter,  whose  sight  fails  over  the  diamonds ;  the 
weaver,  whose  arm  fails  over  the  web ;  the  iron- 
forger,  whose  breath  fails  before  the  furnace  —  they 
know  what  work  is  — they,  who  have  all  the  work, 


32  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD    OLIVE. 

and  none  of  the  play,  except  a  kind  they  have  named 
for  themselves  down  in  the  black  north  country, 
where  "play"  means  being  laid  up  by  sickness.  It 
is  a  pretty  example  for  philologists,  of  varying  dia- 
lect, this  change  in  the  sense  of  the  word,  as  used 
in  the  black  country  of  Birmingham,  and  the  red 
and  black  country  of  Baden  Baden.  Yes,'  gentle- 
inen,  and  gentlewomen,  of  England,  who  think  "  one 
moment  unamused  a  misery,  not  made  for  feeble 
man,"  this  is  what  you  have  brought  the  word 
"play"  to  mean,  in  the  heart  of  merry  England! 
You  may  have  your  fluting  and  piping;  but  there 
are  sad  children  sitting  in  the  market-place,  who 
indeed  cannot  say  to  you,  "  We  have  piped  unto 
you,  and  ye  have  not  danced : "  but  eternally  shall 
say  to  you,  "  We  have  mourned  unto  you,  and  ye 
have  not  lamented." 

§  29.  This,  then,  is  the  first  distinction  between 
the  "upper  and  lower"  classes.  And  this  is  one 
which  is  by  no  means  necessary ;  which  indeed  must, 
in  process  of  good  time,  be  by  all  honest  men's  consent 
abolished.  Men  will  be  taught  that  an  existence  of 
play,  sustained  by  the  blood  of  other  creatures,  is  a 
good  existence  for  gnats  and  jelly-fish ;  but  not  for 
men :  that  neither  days,  nor  lives,  can  be  made  holy 
or  noble  by  doing  nothing  in  them :  that  the  best 
prayer  at  the  beginning  of  a  day  is  that  we  may  not 
lose  its  moments ;  and  the  best  grace  before  meat, 
the  consciousness  that  we  have  justly  earned  our 
dinner.  And  when  we  have  this  much  of  plain 
Christianity  preached  to  us  again,  and  cease  to  trans- 
late the  strict  words,  "  Son,  go  work  to-day  in  my 


WORK.  33 

vineyard,"  into  the  dainty  ones:  "Baby,  go  play 
to-day  in  my  vineyard,"  we  shall  all  be  workers,  in 
one  way  or  another ;  and  this  much  at  least  of  the 
distinction  between  "upper"  and  "lower"  forgotten. 

30.  II.  I  pass  then  to  our  second  distinction; 
between  the  rich  and  poor,  between  Dives  and  Laz- 
arus,—  distinction  which  exists  more  sternly,  I  sup- 
pose, in  this  day,  than  ever  in  the  world,  Pagan  or 
Christian,  till  now.  Consider,  for  instance,  what  the 
general  tenor  of  such  a  paper  as  the  Morning  Post 
implies  of  delicate  luxury  among  the  rich ;  and  then 
read  this  chance  extract  from  it :  — 

"  Yesterday  morning,  at  eight  o'clock,  a  woman, 
passing  a  dung-heap  in  the  stone-yard  near  the  re- 
cently erected  almshouses  in  Shadwell  Gap,  High 
Street,  Shadwell,  called  the  attention  of  a  Thames 
police-constable  to  a  man  in  a  sitting  position  on  the 
dung-heap,  and  said  she  was  afraid  he  was  dead. 
Her  fears  proved  to  be  true.  The  wretched  creature 
appeared  to  have  been  dead  several  hours.  He  had 
perished  of  cold  and  wet,  and  the  rain  had  been  beat- 
ing down  on  him  all  night.  The  deceased  was  a 
bone-picker.  He  was  in  the  lowest  stage  of  poverty, 
poorly  clad,  and  half-starved.  The  police  had  fre- 
quently driven  him  away  from  the  stone-yard,  between 
sunset  and  sunrise,  and  told  him  to  go  home.  He 
selected  a  most  desolate  spot  for  his  wretched  death. 
A  penny  and  some  bones  were  found  in  his  pockets. 
The  deceased  was  between  fifty  and  sixty  years  of 
age.  Inspector  Roberts,  of  the  K  division,  has  given 
directions  for  inquiries  to  be  made  at  the  lodging' 
houses  respecting  the  deceased,  to  ascertain  his  ideor 


34  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

tity  if  possible."  —  Morning  Post,  November  25, 
1864. 

Compare  the  statement  of  the  finding  bones  in  his 
pocket  with  the  following,  from  the  Telegraph  of 
January  16  of  this  year :  — 

"  Again,  the  dietary  scale  for  adult  and  juvenile 
paupers  was  drawn  up  by  the  most  conspicuous  politi- 
cal economists  in  England.  It  is  low  in  quantity, 
but  it  is  sufficient  to  support  nature ;  yet  within  ten 
years  of  the  passing  of  the  Poor  Law  Act,  we  heard 
of  the  paupers  in  the  Andover  Union  gnawing  the 
scraps  of  putri  j  flesh  and  sucking  the  marrow  from 
the  bones  ot  horses  which  they  were  employed  to 
crush." 

You  see  my  reason  for  thinking  that  our  Lazarus  of 
Christianity  has  some  advantage  over  the  Jewish  one. 
Jewish  Lazarus  expected,  or  at  least  prayed,  to  be  fed 
with  crumbs  from  the  rich  man's  table ;  but  our 
Lazarus  is  fed  with  crumbs  from  the  dog's  table. 

31.  Now  this  distinction  between  rich  and  poor 
rests  on  two  bases.  Within  its  proper  limits,  on  a 
basis  which  is  lawful  and  everlastingly  necessary ; 
beyond  them,  on  a  basis  unlawful,  and  everlastingly 
corrupting  the  frame-work  of  society.  The  lawful  basis 
of  wealth  is,  that  a  man  who  works  should  be  paid  the 
fair  value  of  his  work ;  and  that  if  he  does  not  choose 
to  spend  it  to-day,  he  should  have  free  leave  to  keep 
it,  and  spend  it  to-morrow.  Thus,  an  industrious 
man  working  daily,  and  laying  by  daily,  attains  at 
last  the  possession  of  an  accumulated  sum  of  wealth, 
to  which  he  has  absolute  right.  The  idle  person  who 
will  not  work,  and  the  wasteful  person  who  lays  noth- 


ivo/^A-.  35 

Ing  by,  at  the  end  of  the  same  time  will  be  doubly 
poor  —  poor  in  possession,  and  dissolute  in  moral 
habit ;  and  he  will  then  naturally  covet  the  money 
which  the  other  has  saved.  And  if  he  is  then  allowed 
to  attack  the  other,  and  rob  him  of  his  well-earned 
wealth,  there  is  no  more  any  motive  for  saving,  or 
any  reward  for  good  conduct ;  and  all  society  is 
thereupon  dissolved,  or  exists  only  in  systems  of 
rapine.  Therefore  the  first  necessity  of  social  life  is 
the  clearness  of  national  conscience  in  enforcing  the 
law  —  that  he  should  keep  who  has  justly  earned. 
32.  That  law,  I  say,  is  the  proper  basis  of  dis- 
tinction between  rich  and  poor.  But  there  is  also  a 
false  basis  of  distinction ;  namely,  the  power  held 
over  those  who  are  earning  wealth  by  those  who 
already  possess  it,  and  only  use  it  to  gam  more. 
There  will  be  always  a  number  of  men  who  would 
fain  set  themselves  to  the  accumulation  of  wealth  as 
the  sole  object  of  their  lives.  Necessarily,  that  class 
of  men  is  an  uneducated  class,  inferior  in  intellect, 
and  more  or  less  cowardly.  It  is  physically  impossi- 
ble for  a  well-educated,  intellectual,  or  brave  man  to 
make  money  the  chief  object  of  his  thoughts ;  just 
as  it  is  for  him  to  make  his  dinner  the  principal  object 
of  them.  All  healthy  people  like  their  dinners,  but 
their  dinner  is  not  the  main  object  of  their  lives.  So 
all  healthily-minded  people  like  making  money  — 
ought  to  like  it,  and  to  enjoy  the  sensation  of  win- 
ning it ;  but  the  main  object  of  their  life  is  not 
money ;  it  is  something  better  than  money.  A  good 
soldier,  for  instance,  mainly  wishes  to  do  his  fighting 
well.     He  is  glad  of  his  p)ay —  very  properly  so,  and 


36  THE   CROWN-  Of    WILD   OLIVE. 

justly  grumbles  when  you  keep  him  ten  years  without 
it  —  still,  his  main  notion  of  life  is  to  win  battles, 
not  to  be  paid  for  winning  them.  So  of  clergymen. 
They  like  pew-rents,  and  baptismal  fees,  of  course ; 
but  yet,  if  they  are  brave  and  well-educated,  the  pew- 
rent  is  not  the  sole  object  of  their  lives,  and  the  bap- 
tismal fee  is  not  the  sole  purpose  of  the  baptism ; 
the  clergyman's  object  is  essentially  to  baptize  and 
preach,  not  to  be  paid  for  preaching.  So  of  doctors. 
They  like  fees  no  doubt,  —  ought  to  like  them  ;  yet  if 
they  are  brave  and  well-educated,  the  entire  object  of 
their  lives  is  not  fees.  They,  on  the  whole,  desire  to 
cure  the  sick ;  and,  —  if  they  are  good  doctors,  and 
the  choice  were  fairly  put  to  them, — would  rather 
cure  their  patient  and  lose  their  fee,  than  kill  him, 
and  get  it.  And  so  with  all  other  brave  and  rightly- 
trained  men;  their  work  is  first,  their  fee  second  — 
very  important  always,  but  still  second.  But  in  every 
nation,  as  I  said,  there  are  a  vast  class  who  are  ill- 
educated,  cowardly,  and  more  or  less  stupid.  And 
with  these  people,  just  as  certainly  the  fee  is  first, 
and  the  work  second,  as  with  brave  people  the  work 
is  first  and  the  fee  second.  And  this  is  no  small 
distinction.  It  is  between  life  and  death  in  a  man, 
between  heaven  and  hell  for  him.  You  cannot 
serve  two  masters ;  —  you  must  serve  one  or  other. 
If  your  work  is  first  with  you,  and  your  fee  second, 
work  is  your  master,  and  the  lord  of  work,  who  is 
God.  But  if  your  fee  is  first  with  you,  and  your  work 
second,  fee  is  your  master,  and  the  lord  of  fee,  who  is 
the  Devil ;  and  not  only  the  Devil,  but  the  lowest  of 
devils  —  the  "  least  erected  fiend  that  fell."    So  there 


WORK.  37 

you  have  it  in  brief  terms  ;  Work  first  —  you  are  God's 
servants;  Fee  first  —  you  are  the  Fiend's.  And  it 
makes  a  difference,  now  and  ever,  believe  me, 
whether  you  serve  Him  who  has  on  His  vesture  and 
thigh  written,  "  King  of  Kings,"  and  whose  service 
is  perfect  freedom  ;  or  him  on  whose  vesture  and 
thigh  the  name  is  written,  "  Slave  of  Slaves,"  and 
whose  service  is  perfect  slavery. 

33.  However,  in  every  nation  there  are,  and  must 
always  be,  a  certain  number  of  these  Fiend's  servants, 
who  have  it  principally  for  the  object  of  their  lives  to 
make  money.  They  are  always,  as  1  said,  more  or 
less  stupid,  and  cannot  conceive  of  anything  else  so 
nice  as  money.  Stupidity  is  always  the  basis  of  the 
Judas  bargain.  We  do  great  injustice  to  Iscariot,  in 
thinking  him  wicked  above  all  common  wickedness. 
He  was  only  a  common  money-lover,  and,  like  all 
money-lovers,  did  not  understand  Christ  \  —  could  not 
make  out  the  worth  of  Him,  or  meaning  of  Him. 
He  never  thought  He  would  be  killed.  He  was  horror- 
struck  when  he  found  that  Christ  would  be  killed ; 
threw  his  money  away  instantly,  and  hanged  himself. 
How  many  of  our  present  money-seekers,  think  you, 
would  have  the  grace  to  hang  themselves,  whoever 
was  killed?  But  Judas  was  a  common,  selfish, 
muddle-headed,  pilfering  fellow ;  his  hand  always  in 
the  bag  of  the  poor,  not  caring  for  them.  Helpless 
to  understand  Christ,  yet  believed  in  Him,  much 
more  than  most  of  us  do ;  had  seen  Him  do  miracles, 
thought  He  was  quite  strong  enough  to  shift  for  Him- 
self, and  he,  Judas,  might  as  well  make  his  own  little 
bye-perquisites  out  of  the  affair.     Christ  would  come 


38  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

out  of  it  well  enough,  and  he  have  his  thirty  pieces. 
Now,  that  is  the  money-seeker's  idea,  all  over  the 
world.  He  doesn't  hate  Christ,  but  can't  understand 
Him  —  doesn't  care  for  Him  —  sees  no  good  in  that 
benevolent  business ;  makes  his  own  little  job  out 
of  it  at  all  events,  come  what  will.  And  thus,  out  of 
every  mass  of  men,  you  have  a  certain  number  of  bag- 
men—  your  "  fee-first"  men,  whose  main  object  is  to 
make  money.  And  they  do  make  it  —  make  it  in  all 
sorts  of  unfair  ways,  chiefly  by  the  weight  and  force 
of  money  itself,  or  what  is  called  the  power  of  capi- 
tal ;  that  is  to  say,  the  power  which  money,  once 
obtained,  has  over  the  labor  of  the  poor,  so  that  the 
capitalist  can  take  all  its  produce  to  himself,  except 
the  laborer's  food.  That  is  the  modern  Judas's  way 
of  "carrying  the  bag,"  and  "bearing  what  is  put 
therein." 

34.  Nay,  but  (it  is  asked)  how  is  that  an  unfair 
advantage?  Has  not  the  man  who  has  worked  for  the 
money  a  right  to  use  it  as  he  best  can?  No,  in  this 
respect,  money  is  now  exactly  what  mountain  prom- 
ontories over  public  roads  were  in  old  times.  The 
barons  fought  for  them  fairly :  —  the  strongest  and 
cunningest  got  them  ;  then  fortified  them,  and  made 
everyone  who  passed  below  pay  toll.  Well,  capital 
now  is  exactly  what  crags  were  then.  Men  fight  fairly 
(we  will,  at  least,  grant  so  much,  though  it  is  more 
than  we  ought)  for  their  money  ;  but,  once  having  got 
it,  the  fortified  millionaire  can  make  everybody  who 
passes  below  pay  toll  to  his  million,  and  build  another 
tower  of  his  money  castle.  And  I  can  tell  you,  the 
poor  vagrants  by  the  roadside  suffer  now  quite  as 


WORK.  39 

much  from  the  bag-baron,  as  ever  they  did  from  the 
crag-baron.  Bags  and  crags  have  just  the  same  result 
on  rags.  I  have  not  time,  however,  to-night  to  show 
you  in  how  many  ways  the  power  of  capital  is  unjust ; 
but  remember  this  one  great  principle  —  you  will 
find  it  unfailing  —  that  whenever  money  is  the  prin- 
cipal object  of  life  with  either  man  or  nation,  it 
is  both  got  ill,  and  spent  ill ;  and  does  harm  both 
in  the  getting  and  spendimg ;  but  when  it  is  not  the 
principal  object,  it  and  all  other  things  will  be  well 
got  and  well  spent.  And  here  is  the  test,  with 
every  man,  of  whether  money  is  the  principal  object 
with  him,  or  not.  If  in  mid-life  he  could  pause  and 
say,  "  Now  I  have  enough  to  live  upon,  I'll  live  upon 
it ;  and  having  well  earned  it,  I  will  also  well  spend  it, 
and  go  out  of  the  world  poor,  as  I  came  into  it," 
then  money  is  not  principal  with  him  ;  but  if,  having 
enough  to  live  upon  in  the  manner  befitting  his  char- 
acter and  rank,  he  still  wants  to  make  more,  and  to 
die  rich,  then  money  is  the  principal  object  with  him, 
and  it  becomes  a  curse  to  himself,  and  generally  to 
those  who  spend  it  after  him.  For  you  know  it  must 
be  spent  some  day ;  the  only  question  is  whether  the 
man  who  makes  it  shall  spend  it,  or  some  one  else, 
and  generally  it  is  better  for  the  maker  to  spend  it, 
for  he  will  know  best  its  value  and  use.  And  if  a 
man  does  not  choose  thus  to  spend  his  money,  he 
must  either  hoard  it  or  lend  it,  and  the  worst  thing 
he  can  generally  do  is  to  lend  it ;  for  borrowers  are 
nearly  always  ill-spenders,  and  it  is  with  lent  money 
that  all  evil  is  mainly  done,  and  all  unjust  war  pro- 
tracted. 


40  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD    OLIVE. 

35.  For  observe  what  the  real  fact  is,  respecting 
loans  to  foreign  military  governments,  and  how  strange 
it  is.  If  your  little  boy  came  to  you  to  ask  for  money 
to  spend  in  squibs  and  crackers,  you  would  think  twice 
before  you  gave  it  him,  and  you  would  have  some  idea 
that  it  was  wasted,  when  you  saw  it  fly  off  in  fireworks, 
even  though  he  did  no  mischief  with  it.  But  the 
Russian  children  and  Austrian  children  come  to  you, 
borrowing  money,  not  to  spend  in  innocent  squibs, 
but  in  cartridges  and  bayonets  to  attack  you  in  India 
with,  and  to  keep  down  all  noble  life  in  Italy  with, 
and  to  murder  Polish  women  and  children  with  ;  and 
thai  you  will  give  at  once,  because  they  pay  you  inter- 
est for  it.  Now,  in  order  to  pay  you  that  interest, 
they  must  tax  every  working  peasant  in  their  domin- 
ions ;  and  on  that  work  you  live.  You  therefore  at 
once  rob  the  Austrian  peasant,  assassinate  or  banish 
the  Polish  peasant,  and  you  live  on  the  produce  of  the 
theft,  and  the  bribe  for  the  assassination  !  That  is  the 
broad  fact  —  that  is  the  practical  meaning  of  your 
foreign  loans,  and  of  most  large  interest  of  money ; 
and  then  you  quarrel  with  Bishop  Colenso,  forsooth, 
as  if  he  denied  the  Bible,  and  you  believed  it !  though, 
every  deliberate  act  of  your  lives  is  a  new  defiance  of 
its  primary  orders. 

36.  III.  I  must  pass,  however,  now  to  our  third 
condition  of  separation,  between  the  men  who  work 
with  the  hand  and  those  who  work  with  the  head. 

And  here  we  have  at  last  an  inevitable  distinction. 
There  must  be  work  done  by  the  arms,  or  none  of  us 
could  live.  There  must  be  work  done  by  the  brains, 
or  the  life  we  get  would  not  be  worth  having.     And 


WORK.  41 

the  same  men  cannot  do  both.  There  is  rough 
work  to  be  done,  and  rough  men  must  do  it ;  there 
is  gentle  work  to  be  done,  and  gentlemen  must  do  it  ; 
and  it  is  physically  impossible  that  one  class  should 
do,  or  divide,  the  work  of  the  other.  And  it  is  of 
no  use  to  try  to  conceal  this  sorrowful  fact  by  fine 
words,  and  to  talk  to  the  workman  about  the  honor- 
ableness  of  manual  labor,  and  the  dignity  of  human- 
ity. Rough  work,  honorable  or  not,  takes  the  life 
out  of  us ;  and  the  man  who  has  been  heaving  clay 
out  of  a  ditch  all  day,  or  driving  an  express  train 
against  the  north  wind  all  night,  or  holding  a  col- 
lier's helm  in  a  gale  on  a  lee-shore,  or  whirling 
white-hot  iron  at  a  furnace  mouth,  is  not  the  same 
man  at  the  end  of  his  day,  or  night,  as  one  who 
has  been  sitting  in  a  quiet  room,  with  everything 
comfortable  about  him,  reading  books,  or  classing 
butterflies,  or  painting  pictures.*  If  it  is  any  com- 
fort to  you  to  be  told  that  the  rough  work  is  the 
more  honorable  of  the  two,  I  should  be  sorry  to  take 
that  much  of  consolation  from  you ;  and  in  some 
sense  I  need  not.  The  rough  work  is  at  all  events 
real,  honest,  and,  generally,  though  not  always,  use- 
ful ;  while  the  fine  work  is,  a  great  deal  of  it,  foolish 
and  false  as  well  as  fine,  and  therefore  dishonorable : 
but  when  both  kinds  are  equally  well  and  worthily 
done,  the  head's  is  the  noble  work,  and  the  hand's 
the  ignoble.  Therefore,  of  all  hand  work  whatsoever, 
necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  life,  those  old  words, 
"In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  thou  shalt  eat  bread,"  in- 
dicate that  the  inherent  nature  of  it  is  one  of  calamity; 

*  Compare  §  57. 


42  THE    CROWN   OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

and  that  the  ground,  cursed  for  our  sake,  casts  alsc 
some  shadow  of  degradation  into  our  contest  with 
its  thorn  and  its  thistle ;  so  that  all  nations  have 
held  their  days  honorable,  or  "  holy,"  and  consti- 
tuted them  "holydays"  or  "  holidays,"  by  making 
them  days  of  rest ;  and  the  promise,  which,  among 
all  our  distant  hopes,  seems  to  cast  the  chief  bright- 
ness over  death,  is  that  blessing  of  the  dead  who 
die  in  the  Lord,  that  "  they  rest  from  their  labors, 
and  their  works  do  follow  them." 

37.  And  thus  the  perpetual  question  and  contest 
must  arise,  who  is  to  do  this  rough  work?  and  how  is 
the  worker  of  it  to  be  comforted,  redeemed,  and 
rewarded?  and  what  kind  of  play  should  he  have, 
and  what  rest,  in  this  world,  sometimes,  as  well  as 
in  the  next?  Well,  my  good  laborious  friends,  these 
questions  will  take  a  little  time  to  answer  yet. 
They  must  be  answered :  all  good  men  are  occupied 
with  them,  and  all  honest  thinkers.  There's  grand 
head  work  doing  about  them ;  but  much  must  be 
discovered,  and  much  attempted  in  vain,  before  any- 
thing decisive  can  be  told  you.  Only  note  these  few 
particulars,  which  are  already  sure. 

38.  As  to  the  distribution  of  the  hard  work.  None 
of  us,  or  very  few  of  us,  do  either  hard  or  soft  work 
because  we  think  we  ought ;  but  because  we  have 
chanced  to  fall  into  the  way  of  it,  and  cannot  help 
ourselves.  Now,  nobody  does  anything  well  that 
they  cannot  help  doing :  work  is  only  done  well  when 
it  is  done  with  a  will ;  and  no  man  has  a  thoroughly 
sound  will  unless  he  knows  he  is  doing  what  he  should, 
and  is  in  his  place.    And,  depend  upon  it,  all  work 


WORK.  43 

must  be  done  at  last,  not  in  a  disorderly,  scrambling, 
doggish  way,  but  in  an  ordered,  soldierly,  human 
way  —  a  lawful  or  "loyal"  way.  Men  are  enlisted 
for  the  labor  that  kills  —  the  labor  of  war :  they  are 
counted,  trained,  fed,  dressed,  and  praised  for  that. 
Let  them  be  enlisted  also  for  the  labor  that  feeds : 
let  them  be  counted,  trained,  fed,  dressed,  praised  for 
that.  Teach  the  plough  exercise  as  carefully  as  you 
do  the  sword  exercise,  and  let  the  officers  of  troops 
of  life  be  held  as  much  gentlemen  as  the  officers  of 
troops  of  death ;  and  all  is  done :  but  neither  this, 
nor  any  other  right  thing,  can  be  accomplished  — 
you  can't  even  see  your  way  to  it  —  unless,  first  of 
all,  both  servant  and  master  are  resolved  that,  come 
what  will  of  it,  they  will  do  each  ether  justice. 

39.  People  are  perpetually  squabbling  about  what 
will  be  best  to  do,  or  easiest  to  do,  or  advisablest 
to  do,  or  profitablest  to  do ;  but  they  never,  so 
far  as  1  hear  them  talk,  ever  ask  what  it  is  just 
to  do.  And  it  is  the  law  of  heaven  that  you 
shall  not  be  able  to  judge  what  is  wise  or  easy^ 
unless  you  are  first  resolved  to  judge  what  is  just, 
and  to  do  it.  That  is  the  one  thing  constantly  re- 
iterated by  our  Master  —  the  order  of  all  others  that  is 
given  oftenest  —  "  Do  justice  and  judgment."  That's 
your  Bible  order;  that's  the  "Service  of  God," 
—  not  praying  nor  psalm-singing.  You  are  told, 
indeed,  to  sing  psalms  when  you  are  merry,  and  to 
pray  when  you  need  anything ;  and,  by  the  perverse- 
ness  of  the  Evil  Spirit,  we  get  to  think  that  praying 
and  psalm-singing  are  "  service."  If  a  child  finds 
itself  in  want  of  anything,  it  runs  in  and  asks  its 


44  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

father  for  it  —  does  it  call  that  doing  its  father  a 
service?  If  it  begs  for  a  toy  or  a  piece  of  cake  — 
does  it  call  that  serving  its  father?  That,  with  God, 
is  prayer,  and  He  likes  to  hear  it :  He  likes  you  to 
ask  Him  for  cake  when  you  want  it ;  but  He  doesn't 
call  that  "serving  Him."  Begging  is  not  serving: 
God  likes  mere  beggars  as  little  as  you  do  —  He  likes 
honest  servants,  not  beggars.  So  when  a  child 
loves  its  father  very  much,  and  is  very  happy,  it  may 
sing  little  songs  about  him ;  but  it  doesn't  call  that 
serving  its  father;  neither  is  singing  songs  about 
God,  serving  God.  It  is  enjoying  ourselves,  if  it's 
anything;  most  probably  it  is  nothing;  but  if  it's 
anything,  it  is  serving  ourselves,  not  God.  And  yet 
we  are  impudent  enough  to  call  our  beggings  and 
chauntings  "Divine  service:  "we  say  "  Divine  ser- 
vice will  be  '  performed ' "  (that's  our  word  —  the  form 
of  it  gone  through)  "at  so-and-so  o'clock."  Alas! 
unless  we  perform  Divine  service  in  every  willing 
act  of  life,  we  never  perform  it  at  all.  The  one 
Divine  work  —  the  one  ordered  sacrifice  —  is  to  do 
justice ;  and  it  is  the  last  we  are  ever  inclined  to  do. 
Anything  rather  than  that !  As  much  charity  as  you 
choose,  but  no  justice.  "  Nay,"  you  will  say, 
"  charity  is  greater  than  justice."  Yes,  it  is  greater ; 
it  is  the  summit  of  justice  —  it  is  the  temple  of 
which  justice  is  the  foundation.  But  you  can't  have 
the  top  without  the  bottom ;  you  cannot  build  upon 
charity.  You  must  build  upon  justice,  for  this  main 
reason,  that  you  have  not,  at  first,  charity  to  build 
with.  It  is  the  last  reward  of  good  work.  Do  jus- 
tice to  your  brother  (you  can  do  that,  whether  you 


WORK.  45 

iOve  him  or  not),  and  you  will  come  to  love  him. 
But  do  injustice  to  him,  because  you  don't  love  him ; 
and  you  will  come  to  hate  him. 

40.  It  is  all  very  fine  to  think  you  can  build  upon 
charity  to  begin  with ;  but  you  will  find  all  you  will 
have  got  to  begin  with,  begins  at  home,  and  is  essen- 
tially love  of  yourself.  You  well-to-do  people,  for 
instance,  who  are  here  to-night,  will  go  to  "  Divine 
service  "  next  Sunday,  all  nice  and  tidy,  and  your  little 
children  will  have  their  tight  little  Sunday  boots  on, 
and  lovely  little  Sunday  feathers  in  their  hats ;  and 
you'll  think,  complacently  and  piously,  how  lovely 
they  look  going  to  church  in  their  best !  So  they  do : 
and  you  love  them  heartily,  and  you  like  sticking  feath- 
ers in  their  hats.  That's  all  right :  that  is  charity  ; 
bui  it  is  charity  beginning  at  home.  Then  you  will 
come  to  the  poor  little  crossing-sweeper,  got  up  also, 
—  it,  in  its  Sunday  dress,  —  the  dirtiest  rags  it  has, 
— that  it  may  beg  the  better :  you  will  give  it  a 
penny,  and  think  how  good  you  are,  and  how  good 
God  is  to  prefer  your  child  to  the  crossing-sweeper 
and  bestow  on  it  a  divine  hat,  feathers,  and  boots, 
and  the  pleasure  of  giving  pence  instead  of  begging 
for  them.  That's  charity  going  abroad.  But  what 
does  Justice  say,  walking  and  watching  near  us? 
Christian  Justice  has  been  strangely  mute,  and  seem- 
ingly blind ;  and,  if  not  blind,  decrepit,  this  many  a 
day:  she  keeps  her  accounts  still,  however  —  quite 
steadily  —  doing  them  at  nights,  carefully,  with  her 
bandage  off,  and  through  acutest  spectacles  (the  only 
modern  scientific  invention  she  cares  about).  You 
must  put  your  ear  down  ever  so  close  to  her  lips  to 


46  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

hear  her  speak ;  and  then  you  will  start  at  what  she 
first  whispers,  for  it  will  certainly  be,  "  Why  shouldn't 
that  little  crossing-sweeper  have  a  feather  on  its  head, 
as  well  as  your  own  child?"  Then  you  may  ask 
Justice,  in  an  amazed  manner,  "  How  she  can  pos- 
sibly be  so  foolish  as  to  think  children  could  sweep 
crossings  with  feathers  on  their  heads  ?  "  Then  you 
stoop  again,  and  Justice  says  —  still  in  her  dull,  stupid 
way — "Then,  why  don't  you,  every  other  Sunday, 
leave  your  child  to  sweep  the  crossing,  and  take  the 
little  sweeper  to  church  in  a  hat  and  feather?" 
Mercy  on  us  (you  think),  what  will  she  say  next? 
And  you  answer,  of  course,  that  "you  don't,  because 
every  body  ought  to  remain  content  in  the  position 
in  which  Providence  has  placed  them."  Ah,  my 
friends,  that's  the  gist  of  the  whole  question.  Did 
Providence  put  them  in  that  position,  or  d\6.  yout 
You  knock  a  man  into  a  ditch,  and  then  you  tell  him 
to  remain  content  in  the  "  position  in  which  Provi- 
dence has  placed  him."  That's  modern  Christianity. 
You  say — "  We  did  not  knock  him  into  the  ditch." 
We  shall  never  know  what  you  have  done  or  left 
undone,  until  the  question  with  us  every  morning,  is 
not  how  to  do  the  gainful  thing,  but  how  to  do  the 
just  thing  during  the  day ;  nor  until  we  are  at  least 
so  far  on  the  way  to  being  Christian,  as  to  acknowl- 
edge that  maxim  of  the  poor  half-way  Mahometan, 
"  One  hour  in  the  execution  of  justice  is  worth  seventy 
years  of  prayer." 

41.  Supposing,  then,  we  have  it  determined  with 
appropriate  justice,  who  is  to  do  the  hand  work,  the 
next  questions  must  be  how  the  hand-workers  are  to 


IVORIt.  47 

be  paid,  and  how  they  are  to  be  refreshed,  and  what 
play  they  are  to  have.  Now,  the  possible  quantity 
of  play  depends  on  the  possible  quantity  of  pay; 
and  the  quantity  of  pay  is  not  a  matter  for  considera- 
tion to  hand-workers  only,  but  to  all  workers.  Gen- 
erally, good,  useful  work,  whether  of  the  hand  or 
head,  is  either  ill-paid,  or  not  paid  at  all.  I  don't 
say  it  should  be  so,  but  it  always  is  so.  People,  as 
a  rule,  only  pay  for  being  amused  or  being  cheated, 
not  for  being  served.  Five  thousand  a  year  to  your 
talker,  and  a  shilling  a  day  to  your  fighter,  digger, 
and  thinker,  is  the  rule.  None  of  the  best  head 
work  in  art,  literature,  or  science,  is  ever  paid  for. 
How  much  do  you  think  Homer  got  for  his  Iliad  f  or 
Dante  for  his  Paradise  ?  only  bitter  bread  and  salt, 
and  going  up  and  down  other  people's  stairs.  In 
science,  the  man  who  discovered  the  telescope,  and 
first  saw  heaven,  was  paid  with  a  dungeon ;  the  man 
who  invented  the  microscope,  and  first  saw  earth, 
died  of  starvation,  driven  from  his  home.  It  is  in- 
deed very  clear  that  God  means  all  thoroughly  good 
work  and  talk  to  be  done  for  nothing.  Baruch,  the 
scribe,  did  not  get  a  penny  a  line  for  writing  Jere- 
miah's second  roll  for  him,  1  fancy ;  and  St.  Stephen 
did  not  get  bishop's  pay  for  that  long  sermon  of  his 
to  the  Pharisees  ;  nothing  but  stones.  For,  indeed, 
hat  is  the  world-father's  proper  payment.  So  surely 
as  any  of  the  world's  children  work  for  the  world's 
good,  honestly,  with  head  and  heart ;  and  come  to  it, 
saying,  "  Give  us  a  little  bread,  just  to  keep  the  life 
in  us,"  the  world-father  answers  them,  "  No,  my 
-hildren,  not  bread  ;  a  stone,  if  you  like,  or  as  many 


48  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

as  you  need,  to  keep  you  quiet  and  tell  to  future  ages, 
how  unpleasant  you  made  yourself  to  the  one  you 
lived  in." 

42.  But  the  hand-workers  are  not  so  ill  off  as  all 
this  comes  to.  The  worst  that  can  happen  to/^«  is 
to  break  stones ;  not  be  broken  by  them.  And  for 
you  there  will  come  a  time  for  better  payment ;  we 
shall  pay  people  not  quite  so  much  for  talking  in  Par- 
liament and  doing  nothing,  as  for  holding  their  tongues 
out  of  it  and  doing  something ;  we  shall  pay  our  plough- 
man a  little  more,  and  our  lawyer  a  little  less,  and  so 
on :  but,  at  least,  we  may  even  now  take  care  that 
whatever  work  is  done  shall  be  fully  paid  for ;  and  the 
man  who  does  it  paid  for  it,  not  somebody  else  ;  and 
that  it  shall  be  done  in  an  orderly,  soldierly,  well- 
guided,  wholesome  way,  under  good  captains  and  lieu- 
tenants of  labor ;  and  that  it  shall  have  its  appointed 
times  of  rest,  and  enough  of  them  ;  and  that  in  those 
times  the  play  shall  be  wholesome  play,  not  in  theatri- 
cal gardens,  with  tin  flowers  and  gas  sunshine,  and 
girls  dancing  because  of  their  misery ;  but  in  true 
gardens,  with  real  flowers,  and  real  sunshine,  and 
children  dancing  because  of  their  gladness ;  so  that 
truly  the  streets  shall  be  full  (the  "  streets,"  mind  you, 
not  the  gutters)  of  children,  playing  in  the  midst 
thereof.  We  may  take  care  that  working-men  shall 
have  at  least  as  good  books  to  read  as  anybody  else, 
when  they've  time  to  read  them ;  and  as  comfortable 
firesides  to  sit  at  as  anybody  else,  when  they've  time 
to  sit  at  them.  This,  1  think,  can  be  managed  for  you, 
my  laborious  friends,  in  the  good  time. 

43.  IV.   I  must  go  on,  however,  to  our  last  head, 


WORK.  49 

concerning  ourselves  all,  as  workers.  What  is  wise 
work,  and  what  is  foolish  work?  What  the  difference 
between  sense  and  nonsense,  in  daily  occupation? 

There  are  three  tests  of  wise  work :  —  that  it  must 
be  honest,  useful,  and  cheerful. 

1.  It  is  HONEST.  I  hardly  know  anything  more 
strange  than  that  you  recognize  honesty  in  play,  and 
you  do  not  in  work.  In  your  lightest  games,  you 
have  always  some  one  to  see  what  you  call  "  fair- 
play."  In  boxing,  you  must  hit  fair ;  in  racing,  start 
fair.  Your  English  watchword  is  "  fair-//ay,"  your 
English  hatred,  "  iov\-play  ^  Did  it  never  strike  you 
that  you  wanted  another  watchword  also,  "  fair- 
work,''''  and  another  and  bitterer  hatred — "  foul- 
work  "  ?  Your  prize-fighter  has  some  honor  in  him 
yet ;  and  so  have  the  men  in  the  ring  round  him : 
they  will  judge  him  to  lose  the  match,  by  foul  hitting. 
But  your  prize-merchant  gains  his  match  by  foul  sell- 
ing, and  no  one  cries  out  against  that.  You  drive  a 
gambler  out  of  the  gambling-room  who  loads  dice, 
but  you  leave  a  tradesman  in  flourishing  business 
who  loads  scales  !  For  observe,  all  dishonest  dealing 
is  loading  scales.  What  difference  does  it  make 
whether  1  get  short  weight,  adulterate  substance,  or 
dishonest  fabric?  —  unless  that  flaw  in  the  substance 
or  fabric  is  the  worse  evil  of  the  two.  Give  me  short 
measure  of  food,  and  I  only  lose  by  you ;  but  give  me 
adulterate  food,  and  I  die  by  you.  Here,  then,  is 
your  chief  duty,  you  workmen  and  tradesmen  —  to 
be  true  to  yourselves,  and  to  us  who  would  help  you. 
We  can  do  nothing  for  you,  nor  you  for  yourselves, 
without  honesty.     Get  that,  you  get  all ;  without  that, 


so  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

your  suffrages,  your  reforms,  your  free-trade  meas- 
ures, your  institutions  of  science,  are  all  in  vain.  It 
is  useless  to  put  your  heads  together,  if  you  can't  put 
your  hearts  together.  Shoulder  to  shoulder,  right 
hand  to  right  hand,  among  yourselves,  and  no  wrong 
hand  to  anybody  else,  and  you'll  win  the  world  yet. 

44.  II.  Then,  secondly,  wise  work  is  useful. 
No  man  minds,  or  ought  to  mind,  its  being  hard,  if 
only  it  comes  to  something ;  but  when  it  is  hard,  and 
comes  to  nothing ;  when  all  our  bees'  business  turns 
to  spiders' ;  and  for  honey-comb  we  have  only  result- 
ant cobweb,  blown  away  by  the  next  breeze  —  that  is 
the  cruel  thing  for  the  worker.  Yet  do  we  ever  ask 
ourselves,  personally,  or  even  nationally,  whether  our 
work  is  coming  to  anything  or  not  ?  We  don't  care 
to  keep  what  has  been  nobly  done ;  still  less  do  we 
care  to  do  nobly  what  others  would  keep ;  and,  least 
of  all,  to  make  the  work  itself  useful  instead  of  deadly 
to  the  doer,  so  as  to  exert  his  life  indeed,  but  not  to 
waste  it.  Of  all  wastes,  the  greatest  waste  that  you 
can  commit  is  the  waste  of  labor.  If  you  went  down 
in  the  morning  into  your  dairy,  and  found  that 
your  youngest  child  had  got  down  before  you,  and 
that  he  and  the  cat  were  at  play  together,  and  that  he 
had  poured  out  all  the  cream  on  the  floor  for  the  cat 
to  lap  up,  you  would  scold  the  child,  and  be  sorry 
the  cream  was  wasted.  But  if,  instead  of  wooden 
bowls  with  milk  in  them,  there  are  golden  bowls  with 
human  life  in  them,  and  instead  of  the  cat  to  play 
with  —  the  devil  to  play  with ;  and  you  yourself  the 
player;  and  instead  of  leaving  that  golden  bowl  to 
be  broken  by  God  at  the  fountain,  you  break  it  in  the 


ivo/?Ar.  $1 

dust  yourself,  and  pour  the  human  life  out  on  the 
ground  for  the  fiend  to  lick  up  —  that  is  no 
waste ! 

45.  What!  you  perhaps  think,  "to  waste  the 
labor  of  men  is  not  to  kill  them."  Is  it  not?  I 
should  like  to  know  how  you  could  kill  them  more 
utterly  —  kill  them  with  second  deaths,  seventh 
deaths,  hundredfold  deaths  ?  It  is  the  slightest  way 
of  killing  to  stop  a  man's  breath.  Nay,  the  hunger, 
and  the  cold,  and  the  whistling  bullets  —  our  love- 
messengers  between  nation  and  nation  —  have 
brought  pleasant  messages  to  many  a  man  before 
now  ;  orders  of  sweet  release,  and  leave  at  last  to  go 
where  he  will  be  most  welcome  and  most  happy.  At 
the  worst  you  do  but  shorten  his  life,  you  do  not  cor- 
rupt his  life.  But  if  you  put  him  to  base  labor,  if  you 
bind  his  thoughts,  if  you  blind  his  eyes,  if  you  blunt 
his  hopes,  if  you  steal  his  joys,  if  you  stunt  his  body, 
and  blast  his  soul,  and  at  last  leave  him  not  so  much 
as  strength  to  reap  the  poor  fruit  of  his  degradation, 
but  gather  that  for  yourself,  and  dismiss  him  to  the 
grave,  when  you  have  done  with  him,  having,  so  far 
as  in  you  lay,  made  the  walls  of  that  grave  everlast- 
ing ;  (though,  indeed,  I  fancy  the  goodly  bricks  of 
some  of  our  family  vaults  will  hold  closer  in  the 
resurrection  day  than  the  sod  over  the  laborer's 
head),  this  you  think  is  no  waste  and  no  sin! 

46.  III.  Then,  lastly,  wise  work  is  cheerful, 
as  a  child's  work  is.  And  now  I  want  you  to  take 
one  thought  home  with  you,  and  let  it  stay  with 
you. 

Everybody  in  this  room  has  been  taught  to  pray 


52  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD    OLIVE. 

daily,  "  Thy  kingdom  come."  Now,  if  we  hear  a 
man  swear  in  the  streets,  we  think  it  very  wrong, 
and  say  he  "  takes  God's  name  in  vain."  But  there's 
a  twenty  times  worse  way  of  taking  His  name  in  vain, 
than  that.  It  is  to  ask  God  for  what  we  don't  want. 
He  doesn't  like  that  sort  of  prayer.  If  you  don't 
want  a  thing,  don't  ask  for  it :  such  asking  is  the 
worst  mockery  of  your  King  you  can  insult  Him  with  ; 
the  soldiers  striking  Him  on  the  head  with  the  reed 
was  nothing  to  that.  If  you  do  not  wish  for  His  king- 
dom, don't  pray  for  it.  But  if  you  do,  you  must  do 
more  than  pray  for  it ;  you  must  work  for  it.  And,  to 
work  for  it,  you  must  know  what  it  is :  we  have  all 
prayed  for  it  many  a  day  without  thinking.  Observe, 
it  is  a  kingdom  that  is  to  come  to  us  ;  we  are  not  to 
go  to  it.  Also,  it  is  not  to  be  a  kingdom  of  the  dead, 
but  of  the  living.  Also,  it  is  not  to  come  all  at  once, 
but  quietly ;  nobody  knows  how.  "  The  kingdom  of 
God  Cometh  not  with  observation."  Also,  it  is  not 
to  come  outside  of  us,  but  in  our  hearts  :  "  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  within  you."  And,  being  within 
us,  it  is  not  a  thing  to  be  seen,  but  to  be  felt;  and 
though  it  brings  all  substance  of  good  with  it,  it  does 
not  consist  in  that:  "the  kingdom  of  God  is  not 
meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness,  peace,  and  joy  in 
the  Holy  Ghost."  joy,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  holy, 
healthful,  and  helpful  Spirit.  Now,  if  we  want  to 
work  for  this  kingdom,  and  to  bring  it,  and  enter  into 
it,  there's  one  curious  condition  to  be  first  accepted. 
You  must  enter  it  as  children,  or  not  at  all ;  "  Who- 
soever will  not  receive  it  as  a  little  child  shall  not  enter 
therein."    And  again,  *'  Suffer  little  children  to  come 


fTOA-A-.  •   53 

unto  me,  and  forbid  them  noi,  for  of  such  is  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  y  * 

47.  Of  such,  observe.  Not  of  children  them- 
selves, but  of  such  as  children.  I  believe  most 
mothers  who  read  that  text  think  that  all  heaven  or 
the  earth  —  when  it  gets  to  be  like  heaven  —  is  to  be 
/till  of  babies.  But  that's  not  so.  "  Length  of  days, 
and  long  life  and  peace,"  that  is  the  blessing,  not  ta 
die,  still  less  to  live,  in  babyhood.  It  is  the  character 
of  children  we  want,  and  must  gain  at  our  peril ;  let 
us  see,  briefly,  in  what  it  consists. 

The  first  character  of  right  childhood  is  that  it  is 
Modest.  A  well-bred  child  does  not  think  it  can 
teach  its  parents,  or  that  it  knows  everything.  It 
may  think  its  father  and  mother  know  everything,  — 
perhaps  that  all  grown-up  people  know  everything; 
very  certainly  it  is  sure  that  //  does  not.  And  it  is 
always  asking  questions,  and  wanting  to  know  more. 
Well,  that  is  the  first  character  of  a  good  aftd  wise 
man  at  his  work.  To  know  that  he  knows  very  little ; 
—  to  perceive  that  there  are  many  above  him  wiser 
than  he ;  and  to  be  always  asking  questions,  wanting 
to  learn,  not  to  teach.  No  one  ever  teaches  well  who 
wants  to  teach,  or  governs  well  who  wants  to  govern  : 
it  is  an  old  saying  (Plato's,  but  I  know  not  if  his. 
first),  and  as  wise  as  old. 

48.  Then,  the  second  character  of  right  childhood 
is  to  be  Faithful.  Perceiving  that  its  father  knows 
best  what  is  good  for  it,  and  having  found  always,  when 
it  has  tried  its  own  way  against  his,  that  he  was  right 

*  I  have  referred  oftener  to  the  words  of  the  English  Bible  in  this 
lecture  than  in  any  other  of  my  addresses,  because  I  was  here  speaking 
to  an  audience  which  profestied  to  accept  its  authority  implicitly. 


54  THE   CROWN  OF  W/LD   OLIVE. 

and  it  was  wrong,  a  noble  child  trusts  him  at  last 
wholly,  gives  him  its  hand,  and  will  walk  blindfold 
with  him,  if  he  bids  it.  And  that  is  the  true  char- 
acter of  all  good  men  also,  as  obedient  workers,  or 
soldiers  under  captains.  They  must  trust  their  cap- 
tains ;  — they  are  bound  for  their  lives  to  choose  none 
but  those  whom  they  can  trust.  Then,  they  are  not 
always  to  be  thinking  that  what  seems  strange  to 
them,  or  wrong  in  what  they  are  desired  to  do,  is 
strange  or  wrong.  They  know  their  captain  :  where 
he  leads  they  must  follow,  —  what  he  bids,  they  must 
do;  and  without  this  trust  and  faith,  without  this 
captainship  and  soldiership,  no  great  deed,  no  great 
salvation,  is  possible  to  man. 

49.  Then  the  third  character  of  right  childhood 
is  to  be  Loving.  Give  a  little  love  to  a  child, 
and  you  get  a  great  deal  back.  It  loves  everything 
near  it,  when  it  is  a  right  kind  of  child ;  would  hurt 
nothing,  would  give  the  best  it  has  away,  always,  if  you 
need  it  ;  does  not  lay  plans  for  getting  everything  in 
the  house  for  itself,  and  delights  in  helping  people ; 
you  cannot  please  it  so  much  as  by  giving  it  a  chance 
of  being  useful,  in  ever  so  humble  a  way. 

50.  And  because  of  all  these  characters,  lastly,  it 
j  Cheerful.     Putting  its  trust  in  its  father,  it  is  careful 

for  nothing  —  being  full  of  love  to  every  creature,  it 
is  happy  always,  whether  in  its  play  or  in  its  duty. 
Well,  that's  the  great  worker's  character  also  Tak- 
ing no  thought  for  the  morrow ;  taking  thought  only 
for  the  duty  of  the  day ;  trusting  somebody  else  to 
take  care  of  to-morrow ;  knowing  indeed  what  labor 
is,  but  not  what  sorrow  is  ;  and  always  ready  for  play 


ivo/?Jir.  55 

—  beautiful  play.  For  lovely  human  play  is  like  the 
play  of  the  Sun.  There's  a  worker  for  you.  He, 
steady  to  his  time,  is  set  as  a  strong  man  to  run  his 
course,  but  also,  he  rejoiceth  as  a  strong  man  to  run 
his  course.  See  how  he  plays  in  the  morning,  with 
the  mists  below,  and  the  clouds  above,  with  a  ray 
here  and  a  flash  there,  and  a  shower  of  jewels  every- 
where ;  —  that's  the  Sun's  play ;  and  great  human 
play  is  like  his  —  all  various  —  all  full  of  light  and 
life,  and  tender,  as  the  dew  of  the  morning. 

51.  So  then,  you  have  the  child's  character  in 
these  four  things  —  Humility,  Faith,  Charity,  and 
Cheerfulness.  That's  what  you  have  got  to  be  con- 
verted to.  "  Except  ye  be  converted  and  become  as 
little  children."  —  You  hear  much  of  conversion  nowa- 
days ;  but  people  always  seem  to  think  they  have  got 
to  be  made  wretched  by  conversion,  —  to  be  converted 
to  long  faces.  No,  friends,  you  have  got  to  be  con- 
verted to  short  ones  ;  you  have  to  repent  into  child- 
hood, to  repent  into  delight,  and  delightsomeness. 
You  can't  go  into  a  conventicle  but  you'll  hear  plenty 
of  talk  of  backsliding.  Backsliding,  indeed !  I  can 
tell  you,  on  the  ways  most  of  us  go,  the  faster  we 
slide  back  the  better.  Slide  back  into  the  cradle,  if 
going  on  is  into  the  grave:  —  back,  I  tell  you:    back 

—  out  of  your  long  faces,  and  into  your  long  clothes. 
It  is  among  children  only,  and  as  children  only,  that 
you  will  find  medicine  for  your  healing  and  true 
wisdom  for  your  teaching.  There  is  poison  in  the 
counsels  of  the  fnen  of  this  world ;  the  words  they 
speak  are  all  bitterness,  "  the  poison  of  asps  is  under 
their  lips,"  but,  "  the  sucking  child  shall  play  by  the 


';6  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

hole  of  the  asp."  There  is  death  in  the  looks  of  men. 
"  Their  eyes  are  privily  set  against  the  poor ;  "  they 
are  as  the  uncharmable  serpent,  the  cockatrice,  which 
slew  by  seeing.  But  "  the  weaned  child  shall  lay  his 
hand  on  the  cockatrice  den."  There  is  death  in  the 
steps  of  men:  "  their  feet  are  swift  to  shed  blood; 
they  have  compassed  us  in  our  steps  like  the  lion  that 
is  greedy  of  his  prey,  and  the  young  lion  lurking  in 
secret  places ;  "  but,  in  that  kingdom,  the  wolf  shall 
lie  down  with  the  lamb,  and  the  fatling  with  the  lion, 
and  "  a  little  child  shall  lead  them."  There  is  death 
in  the  thoughts  of  men  :  the  world  is  one  wide  riddle 
to  them,  darker  and  darker  as  it  draws  to  a  close ; 
but  the  secret  of  it  is  known  to  the  child,  and  the 
Lord  of  heaven  and  earth  is  most  to  be  thanked  in 
that  •'  He  has  hidden  these  things  from  the  wise  and 
prudent,  and  has  revealed  them  unto  babes."  Yes, 
and  there  is  death  —  infinitude  of  death  in  the  princi- 
palities and  powers  of  men.  As  far  as  the  east  is 
from  the  west,  so  far  our  sins  are  —  not  set  from  us, 
but  multiplied  around  us  :  the  Sun  himself,  think  you 
he  now  "  rejoices  "  to  run  his  course,  when  he  plunges 
westward  to  the  horizon,  so  widely  red,  not  with 
clouds,  but  blood?  And  it  will  be  red  more  widely 
yet.  Whatever  drought  of  the  early  and  latter  rain 
may  be,  there  will  be  none  of  that  red  rain.  You 
fortify  yourselves,  you  arm  yourselves  against  it  in 
vain  ;  the  enemy  and  avenger  will  be  upon  you  also, 
unless  you  learn  that  it  is  not  out  of  the  mouths  of 
the  knitted  gun,  or  the  smoothed  rifle,  but  "  out  of 
the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings  "  that  the  strength 
is  ordained,  which  shall  "  still  the  enemy  and  avenger." 


LECTURE   IL 

TRAFFIC. 


LECTURE  II. 

TRAFFIC. 

Delivered  in  the  Town  Hall,  Bradford. 

52.  My  good  Yorkshire  friends,  you  asked  me  down 
here  among  your  hills  that  I  might  talk  to  you  ^bout 
this  Exchange  you  are  going  to  build :  but  earnestly 
and  seriously  asking  you  to  pardon  me,  I  am  going  to 
do  nothing  of  the  kind.  I  cannot  talk,  or  at  least  can 
say  very  little,  about  this  same  Exchange.  I  must 
talk  of  quite  other  things,  though  not  willingly ;  —  I 
could  not  deserve  your  pardon,  if  when  you  invited 
me  to  speak  on  one  subject,  I  wilfully  spoke  on 
another.  But  I  cannot  speak,  to  purpose,  of  any- 
thing about  which  I  do  not  care ;  and  most  simply 
and  sorrowfully  I  have  to  tell  you,  in  the  outset,  that 
I  do  not  care  about  this  Exchange  of  yours. 

If,  however,  when  you  sent  me  your  invitation,  I 
had  answered,  "  I  won't  come,  I  don't  care  about  the 
Exchange  of  Bradford,"  you  would  have  been  justly 
offended  with  me,  not  knowing  the  reasons  of  so 
blunt  a  carelessness.  So  I  have  come  down,  hoping 
that  you  will  patiently  let  me  tell  you  why,  on  this, 
'^nd  many  other  such  occasions,  I  now  remain  silent, 
when  formerly  I  should  have  caught  at  the  opportunity 
of  speaking  to  a  gracious  audience. 

J0 


6o  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

53.  In  a  word,  then,  I  do  not  care  about  this  Ex- 
change, —  because  you  don't ;  and  because  you  know 
perfectly  well  I  cannot  make  you.  Look  at  the  essen- 
tial conditions  of  the  case,  which  you,  as  business 
men,  know  perfectly  well,  though  perhaps  you  think  I 
forget  them.  You  are  going  to  spend  ^^30,000,  which 
to  you,  collectively,  is  nothing ;  the  buying  a  new  coat 
is,  as  to  the  cost  of  it,  a  much  more  important  matter 
of  consideration  to  me  than  building  a  new  Exchange 
is  to  you.  But  you  think  you  may  as  well  have  the 
right  thing  for  your  money.  You  know  there  are  a 
great  many  odd  styles  of  architecture  about ;  you 
don't  want  to  do  anything  ridiculous ;  you  hear  of 
me,  among  others,  as  a  respectable  architectural  man- 
milliner  ;  and  you  send  for  me,  that  I  may  tell  you  the 
leading  fashion ;  and  what  is,  in  our  shops,  for  the 
moment,  the  newest  and  sweetest  thing  in  pinnacles. 

54.  Now,  pardon  me  for  telling  you  frankly,  you 
cannot  have  good  architecture  merely  by  asking 
people's  advice  on  occasion.  All  good  architecture  is 
the  expression  of  national  life  and  character ;  and  it 
is  produced  by  a  prevalent  and  eager  national  taste, 
or  desire  for  beauty.  And  I  want  you  to  think  a  little 
of  the  deep  significance  of  this  word  "  taste  ;  "  for  no 
statement  of  mine  has  been  more  earnestly  or  oftener 
controverted  than  that  good  taste  is  essentially  a 
moral  quality.  "  No,"  say  many  of  my  antagonists, 
"  taste  is  one  thing,  morality  is  another.  Tell  us 
what  is  pretty :  we  shall  be  glad  to  know  that ;  but 
we  need  no  sermons  even  were  you  able  to  preach 
them,  which  may  be  doubted." 

Permit  me,  therefore,  to  fortify  this  old  dogma  of 


TRAFFIC.  6l 

mine  somewhat.  Taste  is  not  only  a  part  and  an 
index  of  morality  —  it  is  the  only  morality.  The 
first,  and  last,  and  closest  trial  question  to  any  living 
creature  is,  "  What  do  you  like?"  Tell  me  what  you 
like,  and  I'll  tell  you  what  you  are.  Go  out  into  the 
street,  and  ask  the  first  man  or  woman  you  meet, 
what  their  "taste"  is,  and  if  they  answer  candidly, 
you  know  them,  body  and  soul.  "You,  my  friend 
in  the  rags,  with  the  unsteady  gait,  what  do  you 
like?"  "A  pipe  and  a  quartern  of  gin."  I  know 
you.  "You,  good  woman,  with  the  quick  step  and 
tidy  bonnet,  what  do  you  like?"  "A  swept  hearth 
and  a  clean  tea-table,  and  my  husband  opposite  me, 
and  a  baby  at  my  breast."  Good,  I  know  you  also. 
"  You,  little  girl  with  the  golden  hair  and  the  soft 
eyes,  what  do  you  like?"  "My  canary,  and  a  run 
among  the  wood  hyacinths."  "  You,  little  boy  with 
the  dirty  hands  and  the  low  forehead,  what  do  you 
like  ?  "  "A  shy  at  the  sparrows,  and  a  game  at  pitch 
farthing."  Good ;  we  know  them  all  now.  What 
more  need  we  ask  ? 

55.  "Nay,"  perhaps  you  answer:  "we  need 
rather  to  ask  what  these  people  and  children  do,  than 
what  they  like.  If  they  do  right,  it  is  no  matter  that 
they  like  what  is  wrong ;  and  if  they  do  wrong,  it  is 
no  matter  that  they  like  what  is  right.  Doing  is  the 
great  thing ;  and  it  does  not  matter  that  the  man  likes 
drinking,  so  that  he  does  not  drink ;  nor  that  the 
little  girl  likes  to  be  kind  to  her  canary,  if  she  will 
not  learn  her  lessons ;  nor  that  the  little  boy  likes 
throwing  stones  at  the  sparrows,  if  he  goes  to  the 
Sunday  School."    Indeed,  for  a  short  time,  and  in  a 


62  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

provisional  sense,  this  is  true.  For  if,  resolutely 
people  do  what  is  right,  in  time  they  come  to  like 
doing  it.  But  they  only  are  in  a  right  moral  state 
when  they  have  come  to  like  doing  it ;  and  as  long  as 
they  don't  like  it,  they  are  still  in  a  vicious  state. 
The  man  is  not  in  health  of  body  who  is  always 
thinking  of  the  bottle  in  the  cupboard,  though  he 
bravely  bears  his  thirst ;  but  the  man  who  heartily 
enjoys  water  in  the  morning  and  wine  in  the  evening, 
each  in  its  proper  quantity  and  time.  And  the  entire 
object  of  true  education  is  to  make  people  not  merely 
do  the  right  things,  but  enjoy  the  right  things  —  not 
merely  industrious,  but  to  love  industry  —  not  merely 
learned,  but  to  love  knowledge  —  not  merely  pure, 
but  to  love  purity  —  not  merely  just,  but  to  hunger 
and  thirst  after  justice. 

56.  But  you  may  answer  or  think,  "  Is  the  liking 
for  outside  ornaments, — for  pictures,  or  statues,  or 
furniture,  or  architecture,  — a  moral  quality?"  Yes, 
most  surely,  if  a  rightly  set  liking.  Taste  for  any 
pictures  or  statues  is  not  a  moral  quality,  but  taste 
for  good  ones  is.  Only  here  again  we  have  to  define 
the  word  "good."  1  don't  mean  by  '•  good,"  clever 
—  or  learned  —  or  difficult  in  the  doing.  Take  a  pic- 
ture by  Teniers,  of  sots  quarrelling  over  their  dice : 
it  is  an  entirely  clever  picture  ;  so  clever  that  nothing 
in  its  kind  has  ever  been  done  equal  to  it ;  but  it  is 
also  an  entirely  base  and  evil  picture.  It  is  an  ex- 
pression of  delight  in  the  prolonged  contemplation 
of  a  vile  thing,  and  delight  in  that  is  an  "  unman- 
nered,"  or  "  immoral "  quality.  It  is  "  bad  taste  "  in 
the  profoundest  sense  —  it  is  the  taste  of  the  devils. 


TRAFFIC.  63 

On  the  other  hand,  a  picture  of  Titiar's,  or  a  Greek 
statue,  or  a  Greek  coin,  or  a  Turner  landscape,  ex- 
presses delight  in  the  perpetual  contemplation  of  a 
good  and  perfect  thing.  That  is  an  entirely  moral 
quality  —  it  is  the  taste  of  the  angels.  And  all  delight 
in  fine  art,  and  all  love  of  it,  resolve  themselves  into 
simple  love  of  that  which  deserves  love.  That  deserv- 
ing is  the  quality  which  we  call  "  loveliness  "  —  (we 
ought  to  have  an  opposite  word,  hateliness,  to  be 
said  of  the  things  which  deserve  to  be  hated)  ;  and 
it  is  not  an  indifferent  nor  optional  thing  whether  we 
love  this  or  that ;  but  it  is  just  the  vital  function  of 
all  our  being.  What  we  like  determines  what  we  are, 
and  is  the  sign  of  what  we  are  ;  and  to  teach  taste  is 
inevitably  to  form  character. 

57.  As  I  was  thinking  over  this,  in  walking  up 
Fleet  Street  the  other  day,  my  eye  caught  the  title  of 
a  book  standing  open  in  a  book-seller's  window.  It 
was  —  "On  the  necessity  of  the  diffusion  of  taste 
among  all  classes."  "  Ah,"  I  thought  to  myself,  "  my 
classifying  friend,  when  you  have  diffused  your  taste, 
where  will  your  classes  be?  The  man  who  likes 
what  you  like,  belongs  to  the  same  class  with  you, 
1  think.  Inevitably  so.  You  may  put  him  to  other 
work  if  you  choose ;  but,  by  the  condition  you  have 
brought  him  into,  he  will  dislike  the  other  work  as 
much  as  you  would  yourself.  You  get  hold  of  a 
scavanger,  or  a  costermonger,  who  enjoyed  the  New- 
gate Calendar  for  literature,  and  "  Pop  goes  the 
Weasel "  for  music.  You  think  you  can  make  him 
like  Dante  and  Beethoven?  I  wish  you  joy  of  your 
iessons ;  but  if  you  do,  you  have  made  a  gentleman 


64  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

of   him :  —  he  won't  like  to  go  back  to  his  coster- 
mongering." 

58.  And  so  completely  and  unexceptionally  is 
this  so,  that,  if  I  had  time  to-night,  I  could  show  you 
that  a  nation  cannot  be  aflfected  by  any  vice,  or  weak- 
ness, without  expressing  it,  legibly,  and  forever,  either 
in  bad  art,  or  by  want  of  art ;  and  that  there  is  no 
national  virtue,  small  or  great,  which  is  not  mani- 
festly expressed  in  all  the  art  which  circumstances 
enable  the  people  possessing  that  virtue  to  produce. 
Take,  for  instance,  your  great  English  virtue  of 
enduring  and  patient  courage.  You  have  at  present 
in  England  only  one  art  of  any  consequence  —  that 
is,  iron-working.  You  know  thoroughly  well  how  to 
cast  and  hammer  iron.  Now,  do  you  think  in  those 
masses  of  lava  which  you  build  volcanic  cones  to 
melt,  and  which  you  forge  at  the  mouths  of  the 
Infernos  you  have  created ;  do  you  think,  on  those 
iron  plates,  your  courage  and  endurance  are  not 
written  forever  —  not  merely  with  an  iron  pen,  but 
on  iron  parchment  ?  And  take  also  your  great  Eng- 
lish vice  —  European  vice  —  vice  of  all  the  world  — 
vice  of  all  other  worlds  that  roll  or  shine  in  heaven, 
bearing  with  them  yet  the  atmosphere  of  hell  —  the 
vice  of  jealousy,  which  brings  competition  into  your 
commerce,  treachery  into  your  councils,  and  dishonor 
into  your  wars  —  that  vice  which  has  rendered  for 
you,  and  for  your  next  neighboring  nation,  the  daily 
occupations  of  existence  no  longer  possible,  but  with 
the  mail  upon  your  breasts  and  the  sword  loose  in  its 
sheath ;  so  that  at  last,  you  have  realized  for  all  the 
multitudes  of  the  two  great  peoples  who  lead  the  so- 


TRAFFIC.  65 

called  civilization  of  the  earth,  —  you  have  realized 
for  them  all,  I  say,  in  person  and  in  policy,  what  was 
once  true  only  of  the  rough  Border  riders  of  your 
Cheviot  hills  — 

"  They  carved  at  the  meal 
With  gloves  of  steel, 
And  they  drank  the  red  wine  through  the  helmet  barr'd  ;  "  — 

do  you  think  that  this  national  shame  and  dastardli- 
ness  of  heart  are  not  written  as  legibly  on  every  rivet 
of  your  iron  armor  as  the  strength  of  the  right  hands 
that  forged  it? 

59.  Friends,  I  know  not  whether  this  thing  be 
the  more  ludicrous  or  the  more  melancholy.  It  is 
quite  unspeakably  both.  Suppose,  instead  of  being 
now  sent  for  by  you,  I  had  been  sent  for  by  some 
private  gentleman,  living  in  a  surburban  house,  with 
his  garden  separated  only  by  a  fruit-wall  from  his 
next  door  neighbor's ;  and  he  had  called  me  to 
consult  with  him  on  the  furnishing  of  his  drawing 
room.  I  begin  looking  about  me,  and  find  the  walls 
rather  bare ;  I  think  such  and  such  a  paper  might  be 
desirable  —  perhaps  a  little  fresco  here  and  there  on 
the  ceiling  —  a  damask  curtain  or  so  at  the  windows. 
"  Ah,"  says  my  employer,  "  damask  curtains,  indeed! 
That's  all  very  fine,  but  you  know  I  can't  afford  that 
kind  of  thing  just  now!"  "Yet  the  world  credits 
you  with  a  splendid  income  !  "  "  Ah,  yes,"  says  my 
friend,  "but  do  you  know,  at  present,  I  am  obliged 
to  spend  it  nearly  all  in  steel-traps?"  "  Steel-traps  ! 
for  whom?"  "Why,  for  that  follow  on  the  other 
side  the  wall,  you  know :  we're  very  good  friends, 
capital  friends ;  but  we  are  obliged  to  keep  our  traps 


(i(>  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

set  on  both  sides  of  the  wall ;  we  could  not  possibly 
keep  on  friendly  terms  without  them,  and  our  spring 
guns.  The  worst  of  it  is,  we  are  both  clever  fellows 
enough  ;  and  there's  never  a  day  passes  that  we  don't 
find  out  a  new  trap,  or  a  new  gun-barrel,  or  some- 
thing ;  we  spend  about  fifteen  millions  a  year  each 
in  our  traps,  take  it  all  together ;  and  I  don't  see  how 
we're  to  do  with  less."  A  highly  comic  state  of  life 
for  two  private  gentlemen !  but  for  two  nations,  it 
seems  to  me,  not  wholly  comic?  Bedlam  would  be 
comic,  perhaps,  if  there  were  only  one  madman  in  it ; 
and  your  Christmas  pantomime  is  comic,  when  there 
is  only  one  clown  in  it ;  but  when  the  whole  world 
turns  clown,  and  paints  itself  red  with  its  own  heart's 
blood  instead  of  vermilion,  it  is  something  else  than 
comic,  I  think. 

60.  Mind,  I  know  a  great  deal  of  this  is  play,  and 
willingly  allow  for  that.  You  don't  know  what  to  do 
with  yourselves  for  a  sensation :  fox-hunting  and 
cricketing  will  not  carry  you  through  the  whole  of 
this  unendurably  long  mortal  life  :  you  liked  pop-guns 
when  you  were  schoolboys,  and  rifles  and  Armstrongs 
are  only  the  same  things  better  made :  but  then  the 
worst  of  it  is,  that  what  was  play  to  you  when  boys, 
was  not  play  to  the  sparrows  ;  and  what  is  play  to  you 
now,  is  not  play  to  the  small  birds  of  State  neither ; 
and  for  the  black  eagles,  you  are  somewhat  shy  of 
taking  shots  at  them,  if  I  mistake  not. 

61.  I  must  get  back  to  the  matter  in  hand,  how- 
ever. Believe  me,  without  farther  instance,  I  could 
show  you,  in  all  time,  that  every  nation's  vice,  or  virtue, 
was  written  in  its  art :  the  soldiership  of  early  Greece ; 


TRAFFIC.  67 

the  sensuality  of  late  Italy ;  the  visionary  religion  of 
Tuscany ;  the  splendid  human  energy  and  beauty  of 
Venice.  I  have  no  time  to  do  this  to-night  (I  have 
done  it  elsewhere  before  now)  ;  but  I  proceed  to  apply 
the  principle  to  ourselves  in  a  more  searching  manner. 
I  notice  that  among  all  the  new  buildings  which  cover 
your  once  wild  hills,  churches  and  schools  are  mixed 
m  due,  that  is  to  say,  in  large  proportion,  with  your 
mills  and  mansions  ;  and  I  notice  also  that  the  churches 
and  schools  are  almost  always  Gothic,  and  the  man- 
sions and  mills  are  never  Gothic.  Will  you  allow  me 
to  ask  precisely  the  meaning  of  this  ?  For,  remem- 
ber, it  is  peculiarly  a  modern  phenomenon.  When 
Gothic  was  invented,  houses  were  Gothic  as  well  as 
churches  ;  and  when  the  Italian  style  superseded  the 
Gothic,  churches  were  Italian  as  well  as  houses.  If 
there  is  a  Gothic  spire  to  the  cathedral  of  Antwerp, 
there  is  a  Gothic  belfry  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville  at  Brus- 
sels ;  if  Inigo  Jones  builds  an  Italian  Whitehall,  Sir 
Christopher  Wren  builds  an  Italian  St.  Paul's.  But 
now  you  live  under  one  school  of  architecture,  and 
worship  under  another.  What  do  you  mean  by  doing 
this  ?  Am  I  to  understand  that  you  are  thinking  of 
changing  your  architecture  back  to  Gothic ;  and  that 
you  treat  your  churches  experimentally,  because  it 
does  not  matter  what  mistakes  you  make  in  a  church  ? 
Or  am  I  to  understand  that  you  consider  Gothic  a  pre- 
eminently sacred  and  beautiful  mode  of  building, 
which  you  think,  like  the  fine  frankincense,  should 
be  mixed  for  the  tabernacle  only,  and  reserved  for 
your  religious  services  ?  For  if  this  be  the  feeling, 
though  it  may  seem  at  first  as  if  it  were  graceful  and 


68  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

reverent,  at  the  root  of  the  matter,  it  signifies  neither 
more  nor  less  than  that  you  have  separated  your 
religion  from  your  life. 

62.  For  consider  what  a  wide  significance  this  fact 
has ;  and  remember  that  it  is  not  you  only,  but  all  the 
people  of  England,  who  are  behaving  thus  just  now. 

You  have  all  got  into  the  habit  of  calling  the  church 
"  the  house  of  God."  I  have  seen,  over  the  doors  of 
many  churches,  the  legend  actually  carved,  "  This  is 
the  house  of  God,  and  this  is  the  gate  of  heaven." 
Now,  note  where  that  legend  comes  from,  and  of 
what  place  it  was  first  spoken.  A  boy  leaves  his 
father's  house  to  go  on  a  long  journey  on  foot,  to  visit 
his  uncle  ;  he  has  to  cross  a  wild  hill-desert ;  just  as 
if  one  of  your  own  boys  had  to  cross  the  wolds 
to  visit  an  uncle  at  Carlisle.  The  second  or  third 
day  your  boy  finds  himself  somewhere  between 
Hawes  and  Brough,  in  the  midst  of  the  moors, 
at  sunset.  It  is  stony  ground,  and  boggy  ;  he  cannot 
go  one  foot  farther  that  night.  Down  he  lies,  to 
sleep,  on  Wharnside,  where  best  he  may,  gathering 
a  few  of  the  stones  together  to  put  under  his  head  ;  — 
so  wild  the  place  is,  he  cannot  get  anything  but 
stones.  And  there,  lying  under  the  broad  night,  he 
has  a  dream  ;  and  he  sees  a  ladder  set  up  on  the  earth, 
and  the  top  of  it  reaches  to  heaven,  and  the  angels 
of  God  are  seen  ascending  and  descending  upon  it. 
And  when  he  wakes  out  of  his  sleep,  he  says,  "  How 
dreadful  is  this  place  ;  surely,  this  is  none  other  than 
the  house  of  God,  and  this  is  the  gate  of  heaven." 
This  PLACE,  observe  ;  not  this  church  ;  not  this  city ; 
not  this  stone,  even,  which  he  puts  up  for  a  memorial 


TRAFFIC.  69 

— .  the  piece  of  flint  on  which  his  head  has  lain.  But 
this  place;  this  windy  slope  of  Wharnside ;  this 
moorland  hollow,  torrent-bitten,  snow-blighted ;  this 
any  place  where  God  lets  down  the  ladder.  And  how 
are  you  to  know  where  that  will  be  ?  or  how  are  you 
to  determine  where  it  may  be,  but  by  being  ready  for 
it  always  ?  Do  you  know  where  the  lightning  is  to 
fall  next  ?  You  do  know  that,  partly ;  you  can  guide 
the  lightning ;  but  you  cannot  guide  the  going  forth 
of  the  Spirit,  which  is  as  that  lightning  when  it  shines 
from  the  east  to  the  west. 

63.  But  the  perpetual  and  insolent  warping  of  that 
strong  verse  to  serve  a  merely  ecclesiastical  purpose, 
is  only  one  of  the  thousand  instances  in  which  we 
sink  back  into  gross  Judaism.  We  call  our  churches 
"  temples."  Now,  you  know  perfectly  well  they 
are  not  temples.  They  have  never  had,  never  can 
have,  anything  whatever  to  do  with  temples.  They 
are  "synagogues"  —  "gathering  places"  —  where 
you  gather  yourselves  together  as  an  assembly ;  and 
by  not  calling  them  so,  you  again  miss  the  force  of 
another  mighty  text — "Thou,  when  thou  prayest, 
shalt  not  be  as  the  hypocrites  are ;  for  they  love  to 
pray  standing  in  the  churches "  [we  should  translate 
it],  "  that  they  may  be  seen  of  men.  But  thou,  when 
thou  prayest,  enter  into  thy  closet,  and  when  thou 
hast  shut  thy  door,  pray  to  thy  Father,"  —  which  is, 
not  in  chancel  nor  in  aisle,  but  "  in  secret." 

64  Now,  you  feel,  as  I  say  this  to  you  —  I  know 
you  feel  —  as  if  I  were  trying  to  take  away  the  honor 
of  your  churches.  Not  so;  I  am  trying  to  prove 
to   you  the  honor  of  your  houses  and   your   hills ; 


7©  THE   CKOWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

not  that  the  Church  is  not  sacred  —  but  that  the 
whole  Earth  is.  I  would  have  you  feel,  what  care- 
less, what  constant,  what  infectious  sin  there  is  in 
all  modes  of  thought,  whereby,  in  calling  your 
churches  only  "holy,"  you  call  your  hearths  and 
homes  "profane;"  and  have  separated  yourselves 
from  the  heathen  by  casting  all  your  household  gods 
to  the  ground,  instead  of  recognizing,  in  the  place  of 
their  many  and  feeble  Lares,  the  presence  of  your 
One  and  Mighty  Lord  and  Lar. 

65.  "  But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  our  Ex- 
change ?"  you  ask  me,  impatiently.  My  dear  friends, 
it  has  just  everything  to  do  with  it ;  on  these  inner  and 
great  questions  depend  all  the  outer  and  little  ones ; 
and  if  you  have  asked  me  down  here  to  speak  to  you, 
because  you  had  before  been  interested  in  anything  I 
have  written,  you  must  know  that  all  I  have  yet  said 
about  architecture  was  to  show  this.  The  book  1 
called  "  The  Seven  Lamps"  was  to  show  that  certain 
right  states  of  temper  and  moral  feeling  were  the 
magic  powers  by  which  all  good  architecture,  without 
exception,  had  been  produced.  "  The  Stones  of 
Venice  "  had,  from  beginning  to  end,  no  other  aim 
than  to  show  that  the  Gothic  architecture  of  Venice 
had  arisen  out  of,  and  indicated  in  all  its  features,  a 
state  of  pure  national  faith,  and  of  domestic  virtue ; 
and  that  its  Renaissance  architecture  had  arisen  out 
of,  and  in  all  its  features  indicated,  a  state  of  con- 
cealed national  infidelity,  and  of  domestic  corruption. 
And  now,  you  ask  me  what  style  is  best  to  build  in ; 
and  how  can  I  answer,  knowing  the  meaning  of  the 
two  styles,  but  by  another  question  —  do  you  mean 


TRAFFIC.  71 

to  build  as  Christians  or  as  Infidels  ?  And  still  more 

—  do  you  mean  to  build  as  honest  Christians  or  as 
honest  Infidels  ?  as  thoroughly  and  confessedly  either 
one  or  the  other  ?  You  don't  like  to  be  asked  such 
rude  questions.  I  cannot  help  it ;  they  are  of  much 
more  importance  than  this  Exchange  business ;  and 
if  they  can  be  at  once  answered,  the  Exchange  busi- 
ness settles  itself  in  a  moment.-  But,  before  I  press 
them  farther,  I  must  ask  leave  to  explain  one  point 
clearly. 

66.    In  all  my  past  work,  my  endeavor  has  been 
to  show  that  good  architecture  is  essentially  religious 

—  the  production  of  a  faithful  and  virtuous,  not  of  an 
infidel  and  corrupted  people.  But  in  the  course  of 
doing  this,  I  have  had  also  to  show  that  good  archi- 
tecture is  not  ecclesiastical.  People  are  so  apt  to  look 
upon  religion  as  the  business  of  the  clergy,  not  their 
own,  that  the  moment  they  hear  of  anything  depend- 
ing on  "religion,"  they  think  it  must  also  have  de- 
pended on  the  priesthood ;  and  I  have  had  to  take 
what  place  was  to  be  occupied  between  these  two 
errors,  and  fight  both,  often  with  seeming  contradic- 
tion. Good  architecture  is  the  work  of  good  and  be- 
lieving men ;  therefore,  you  say,  at  least  some  people 
say,  "Good  architecture  must  essentially  have  been 
the  work  of  the  clergy,  not  of  the  laity."  No  —  a 
thousand  times  no ;  good  architecture  *  has  always 
been  the  work  of  the  commonalty,  not  of  the  clergy. 
What,  you  say,  those  glorious  cathedrals  —  the  pride 
of  Europe  —  did  their  builders  not  form  Gothic  archi- 

•  And  all  other  arts,  for  the  most  part;    even  of  incredulous  and 
secularly-minded  commonalities. 


72  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

lecture  ?  No ;  they  corrupted  Gothic  architecture. 
Gothic  was  formed  in  the  baron's  castle,  and  the 
burgher's  street.  It  was  formed  by  the  thoughts,  and 
hands,  and  powers  of  free  citizens  and  warrior  kings. 
By  the  monk  it  was  used  as  an  instrument  for  the  aid 
of  his  superstition ;  when  that  superstition  became  a 
beautiful  madness,  and  the  best  hearts  of  Europe 
vainly  dreamed  and  pined  in  the  cloister,  and  vainly 
raged  and  perished  in  the  crusade  —  through  that  fiiry 
of  perverted  faith  and  wasted  war,  the  Gothic  rose 
also  to  its  loveliest,  most  fantastic,  and,  finally,  most 
foolish  dreams ;  and,  in  those  dreams,  was  lost. 

67.  I  hope,  now,  that  there  is  no  risk  of  your  mis- 
understanding me  when  I  come  to  the  gist  of  what  I 
want  to  say  to-ni^^ht ;  —  when  I  repeat,  that  every  grep.t 
national  architecture  has  been  the  result  and  expo- 
nent of  a  great  national  religion.  You  can't  have  bits 
of  it  here,  bits  there  —  you  must  have  it  everywhere, 
or  nowhere.  It  is  not  the  monopoly  of  a  clerical  com- 
pany —  it  is  not  the  exponent  of  a  theological  dogma 
—  it  is  not  the  hieroglyphic  writing  of  an  initiated 
priesthood ;  it  is  the  manly  language  of  a  people 
inspired  by  resolute  and  common  purpose,  and  render- 
ing resolute  and  common  fidelity  to  the  legible  laws 
of  an  undoubted  God. 

68.  Now,  there  have  as  yet  been  three  distinct 
schools  of  European  architecture.  I  say,  European, 
because  Asiatic  and  African  architectures  belong  so 
entirely  to  other  races  and  climates,  that  there  is  no 
question  of  them  here;  only,  in  passing,  I  will  simply 
assure  you  that  whatever  is  good  or  great  in  Egypt, 
and  Syria,  and  India,  is  just  good  or  great  for  the 


TRAFFIC.  73 

same  reasons  as  the  buildings  on  our  side  of  the 
Bosphorus.  We  Europeans,  then,  have  had  three 
great  religions  :  the  Greek,  which  was  the  worship  of 
the  God  of  Wisdom  and  Power ;  the  Mediaeval,  which 
was  the  Worship  of  the  God  of  Judgment  and  Con- 
solation ;  the  Renaissance,  which  was  the  worship  of 
the  God  of  Pride  and  Beauty ;  these  three  we  have 
had  —  they  are  past,  —  and  now,  at  last,  we  English 
have  got  a  fourth  religion,  and  a  God  of  our  own, 
about  which  I  want  to  ask  you.  But  I  must  explain 
these  three  old  ones  first. 

69.  I  repeat,  first,  the  Greeks  essentially  wor- 
shipped the  God  of  Wisdom ;  so  that  whatever 
contended  against  their  religion, — to  the  Jews  a 
stumbling  block,  —  was,  to  the  Greeks  —  Foolishness . 

The  first  Greek  idea  of  Deity  was  that  expressed  in 
the  word,  of  which  we  keep  the  remnant  in  our  words 
"  Z>/-urnal "  and  "  Z?/-vine  " —  the  god  of  Day,  Jupitei 
the  revealer.  Athena  is  his  daughter,  but  especially 
daughter  of  the  Intellect,  springing  armed  from  the 
head.  We  are  only  with  the  help  of  recent  investi- 
gation beginning  to  penetrate  the  depth  of  meaning 
couched  under  the  Athenaic  symbols :  but  I  may  note 
rapidly,  that  her  aegis,  the  mantle  with  the  serpent 
fringes,  in  which  she  often,  in  the  best  statues,  is 
represented  as  folding  up  her  left  hand  for  better 
guard,  and  the  Gorgon  on  her  shield,  are  both  repre- 
sentative mainly  of  the  chilling  horror  and  sadness 
( turning  men  to  stone,  as  it  were,)  of  the  outmost 
and  superficial  spheres  of  knowledge  —  that  knowledge 
which  separates,  in  bitterness,  hardness,  and  sorrow, 
the  heart  of  the  full-grown  man  from  the  heart  of  the 


74  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

child.  For  out  of  imperfect  knowledge  spring  terror, 
dissension,  danger,  and  disdain ;  but  from  perfect 
knowledge,  given  by  the  full-revealed  Athena,  strength 
and  peace,  in  sign  of  which  she  is  crowned  with  the 
olive  spray,  and  bears  the  resistless  spear. 

This,  then,  was  the  Greek  conception  of  purest 
Deity,  and  every  habit  of  life,  and  every  form  of  his 
art  developed  themselves  from  the  seeking  this  bright, 
serene,  resistless  wisdom ;  and  setting  himself,  as  a 
man,  to  do  things  evermore  rightly  and  strongly ;  * 
not  with  any  ardent  affection  or  ultimate  hope ;  but 
with  a  resolute  and  continent  energy  of  will,  as  know- 
ing that  for  failure  there  was  no  consolation,  and  for 
sin  there  was  no  remission.  And  the  Greek  architec- 
ture rose  unerring,  bright,  clearly  defined,  and  self- 
contained. 

70.  Next  followed  in  Europe  the  great  Christian 
faith,  which  was  essentially  the  religion  of  Comfort. 
Its  great  doctrine  is  the  remission  of  sins ;  for  which 
cause  it  happens,  too  often,  in  certain  phases  of  Christi- 
anity, that  sin  and  sickness  themselves  are  partly  glori- 
fied, as  if,  the  more  you  had  to  be  healed  of,  the  more 
divine  was  the  healing.  The  practical  result  of  this 
doctrine,  in  art,  is  a  continual  contemplation  of  sin 

*  It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  the  Greek  worship,  or  seeking,  was 
chiefly  of  Beauty.  It  was  essentially  of  Rightness  and  Strength, 
founded  on  Forethought :  the  principal  character  of  Greek  art  is  not 
Beauty,  but  design  :  and  the  Dorian  Apollo-worship  and  Athenian 
Virgin-worship  are  both  expressions  of  adoration  of  divine  Wisdom  and 
Purity.  Next  to  these  great  deities  rank,  in  power  over  the  national 
mind,  Dionysus  and  Ceres,  the  givers  of  human  strength  and  life  : 
then,  for  heroic  example,  Hercules.  There  is  no  Venus-worship  among 
the  Greeks  in  the  great  times :  and  the  Muses  are  essentially  teachers 
of  Truth,  and  of  its  harmonies.    Compare  Aratra  Penteiici,  §  zoo. 


TRAFFIC.  75 

and  disease,  and  of  imaginary  states  of  purification 
from  them ;  thus  we  have  an  architecture  conceived 
in  a  mingled  sentiment  of  melancholy  and  aspiration, 
partly  severe,  partly  luxuriant,  which  will  bend  itself 
to  every  one  of  our  needs,  and  every  one  of  our  fancies, 
and  be  strong  or  weak  with  us,  as  we  are  strong  or 
weak  ourselves.  It  is,  of  all  architecture,  the  basest, 
when  base  people  build  it  —  of  all,  the  noblest,  when 
built  by  the  noble. 

71.  And  now  note  that  both  these  religions  — 
Greek  and  Mediaeval  —  perished  by  falsehood  in  their 
own  main  purpose.  The  Greek  religion  of  Wisdom 
perished  in  a  false  philosophy  —  "Oppositions  of 
science,  falsely  so  calleu  "  The  Mediaeval  religion 
of  Consolation  perished  in  false  comfort ;  in  remis- 
sion of  sins  given  lyingly.  It  was  the  selling  of 
absolution  that  ended  the  Mediaeval  faith  ;  and  I  can 
tell  you  more,  it  is  the  selling  of  absolution  which,  to 
the  end  of  time,  will  mark  false  Christianity.  Pure 
Christianity  gives  her  remission  of  sins  only  by  ending 
them ;  but  false  Christianity  gets  her  remission  of 
sins  by  compounding  for  them.  And  there  are  many 
ways  of  compounding  for  them.  We  English  have 
beautiful  little  quiet  ways  of  buying  absolution, 
whether  in  low  Church  or  high,  far  more  cunning 
than  any  of  Tetzel's  trading. 

72.  Then,  thirdly,  there  followed  the  religion  of 
Pleasure,  in  which  all  Europe  gave  itself  to  luxury, 
ending  in  death.  First,  bals  masqu/s  in  every 
saloon,  and  then  guillotines  in  every  square.  And 
all  these  three  worships  issue  in  vast  temple  building. 
Your  Greek  worshipped  Wisdom,  and  built  you  the 


76  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

Parthenon  —  the  Virgin's  temple.  The  Mediaeval 
worshipped  Consolation,  and  built  you  Virgin  temples 
also  —  but  to  our  Lady  of  Salvation.  Then  the 
Revivalist  worshipped  beauty,  of  a  sort,  and  built  you 
Versailles,  and  the  Vatican.  Now,  lastly,  will  you 
tell  me  what  we  worship,  and  what  we  build  ? 

73.  You  know  we  are  speaking  always  of  the  real, 
active,  continual,  national  worship ;  that  by  which 
men  act  while  they  live ;  not  that  which  they  talk  of 
when  they  die.  Now,  we  have,  indeed,  a  nominal 
religion,  to  which  we  pay  tithes  of  property  and 
sevenths  of  time ;  but  we  have  also  a  practical  and 
earnest  religion,  to  which  we  devote  nine-tenths  of 
our  property  and  sixth-sevenths  of  our  time.  And 
we  dispute  a  great  deal  about  the  nominal  religion ; 
but  we  are  all  unanimous  about  this  practical  one,  of 
which  I  think  you  will  admit  that  the  ruling  goddess 
may  be  best  generally  described  as  the  "  Goddess  of 
Getting-on,"  or  "  Britannia  of  the  Market."  The 
Athenians  had  an  "Athena  Agoraia,"  or  Athena  of 
the  Market ;  but  she  was  a  subordinate  type  of  their 
goddess,  while  our  Britannia  Agoraia  is  the  principal 
type  of  ours.  And  all  your  great  architectural  works, 
are,  of  course,  built  to  her.  It  is  long  since  you 
built  a  great  cathedral ;  and  how  you  would  laugh  at 
me,  if  I  proposed  building  a  cathedral  on  the  top  of 
one  of  these  hills  of  yours,  to  make  it  an  AcropoHs ! 
But  your  railroad  mounds,  vaster  than  the  walls  of 
Babylon ;  your  railroad  stations,  vaster  .han  the  tem- 
ple of  Ephesus,  and  innumerable ;  your  chimneys 
how  much  more  mighty  and  costly  than  cathedral 
spires !   your  harbor  piers ;  your  warehouses ;   your 


TRAFFIC.  11 

exchanges !  —  all  these  are  built  to  your  great  God- 
dess of  "  Getting-on  ;  "  and  she  has  formed,  and  will 
continue  to  form,  your  architecture,  as  long  as  you 
worship  her ;  and  it  is  quite  vain  to  ask  me  to  tell 
you  how  to  build  to  her  ;  you  know  far  better  than  I. 
74.  There  might  indeed,  on  some  theories,  be  a 
conceivably  good  architecture  for  Exchanges  —  that 
is  to  say,  if  there  were  any  heroism  in  the  fact  or 
deed  of  exchange,  which  might  be  typically  carved  on 
the  outside  of  your  building.  For,  you  know,  all 
beautiful  architecture  must  be  adorned  with  sculpture 
or  painting ;  and  for  sculpture  or  painting,  you  must 
have  a  subject.  And  hitherto  it  has  been  a  received 
opinion  among  the  nations  of  the  world  that  the  only 
right  subjects  for  either,  were  heroisms  of  some  sort. 
Even  on  his  pots  and  his  flagons,  the  Greek  put  a 
Hercules  slaying  lions,  or  an  Apollo  slaying  serpents, 
or  Bacchus  slaying  melancholy  giants,  and  earth-born 
despondencies.  On  his  temples,  the  Greek  put  con- 
tests of  great  warriors  in  founding  states,  or  of  gods 
with  evil  spirits.  On  his  houses  and  temples  alike, 
the  Christian  put  carvings  of  angels  conquering  devils  ; 
or  of  hero-martyrs  exchanging  this  world  for  another ; 
subject  inappropriate,  I  think,  to  our  direction  of 
exchange  here.  And  the  Master  of  Christians  not 
only  left  his  followers  without  any  orders  as  to  the 
sculpture  of  affairs  of  exchange  on  the  outside  of 
buildings,  but  gave  some  strong  evidence  of  his  dis- 
like of  affairs  of  exchange  within  them.  And  yet 
there  might  surely  be  a  heroism  in  such  affairs  ;  and 
all  commerce  become  a  kind  of  selling  of  doves,  not 
impious.     The  wonder  has  always  been  great  to  me- 


^S  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

that  heroism  has  never  been  supposed  to  be  in  any- 
wise consistent  with  the  practice  of  supplying  people 
with  food,  or  clothes  ;  but  rather  with  that  of  quarter- 
ing one's  self  upon  them  for  food,  and  stripping  them 
of  their  clothes.  Spoiling  of  armor  is  an  heroic  deed 
in  all  ages ;  but  the  selling  of  clothes,  old  or  new, 
has  never  taken  any  color  of  magnanimity.  Yet  one 
does  not  see  why  feeding  the  hungry  and  clothing  the 
naked  should  ever  become  base  businesses,  even  when 
engaged  in  on  a  large  scale.  If  one  could  contrive 
to  attach  the  notion  of  conquest  to  them  anyhow !  so 
that,  supposing  there  were  anywhere  an  obstinate 
race,  who  refused  to  be  comforted,  one  might  take 
some  pride  in  giving  them  compulsory  comfort !  *  and 
as  it  were,  '^'^  occupying  a  country"  with  one's  gifts, 
instead  of  one's  armies?  If  one  could  only  consider 
it  as  much  a  victory  to  get  a  barren  field  sown,  as  to 
get  an  eared  field  stripped  ;  and  contend  who  should 
build  villages,  instead  of  who  should  ' '  carry  "  them ! 
Are  not  all  forms  of  heroism,  conceivable  in  doing 
these  serviceable  deeds  ?  You  doubt  who  is  strong- 
est? It  might  be  ascertained  by  push  of  spade,  as 
well  as  push  of  sword.  Who  is  wisest  ?  There  are 
witty  things  to  be  thought  of  in  planning  other  busi- 
ness than  campaigns.  Who  is  bravest?  There  are 
always  the  elements  to  fight  with,  stronger  than  men  ; 
and  nearly  as  merciless. 

75.  The  only  absolutely  and  unapproachably 
heroic  element  in  the  soldier's  work  seems  to  be  — 
that  he  is  paid  little  for  it  —  and  regularly :  while 
you  traffickers,  and  exchangers,  and  others  occupied 

y  *  Quite  serious,  all  this,  though  it  reads  Uke  jest 


TRAFFIC.  79 

in  presumably  benevolent  business,  like  to  be  paid 
much  for  it  —  and  by  ciiance.  I  never  can  make  out 
how  it  is  that  a  knight-err2ix\t  does  not  expect  to  be 
paid  for  his  trouble,  but  z.  pedler-trrdint  always  does ; 
—  that  people  are  willing  to  take  hard  knocks  for 
nothing,  but  never  to  sell  ribands  cheap ;  —  that 
they  are  ready  to  go  on  fervent  crusades  to  recover 
the  tomb  of  a  buried  God,  but  never  on  any  travels 
to  fulfil  the  orders  of  a  living  one ;  —  that  they  will 
go  anywhere  barefoot  to  preach  their  faith,  but  must  be 
well  bribed  to  practise  it,  and  are  perfectly  ready  to 
give  the  Gospel  gratis,  but  never  the  loaves  and  fishes.* 
76.  If  you  chose  to  take  the  matter  up  on  any 
such  soldierly  principle,  to  do  your  commerce,  and 
your  feeding  of  nations,  for  fixed  salaries  ;  and  to  be  as 
particular  about  giving  people  the  best  food,  and  the 
best  cloth,  as  soldiers  are  about  giving  them  the  best 
gunpowder,  I  could  carve  something  for  you  on  your 
exchange  worth  looking  at.  But  I  can  only  at  present 
suggest  decorating  its  frieze  with  pendent  purses  ;  and 
making  its  pillars  broad  at  the  base,  for  the  sticking 
of  bills.  And  in  the  innermost  chambers  of  it  there 
might  be  a  statue  of  Britannia  of  the  Market,  who 
may  have,  perhaps  advisably,  a  partridge  for  her  crest, 
typical  at  once  of  her  courage  in  fighting  for  noble 
ideas,  and  of  her  interest  in  game ;  and  round  its 
neck  the  inscription  in  golden  letters,  "  Perdix  fovit 
quae  non  peperit."  f     Then,  for  her  spear,  she  might 

*  Please  think  over  this  paragraph,  too  briefly  and  antithetically 
put,  but  one  of  those  which  I  am  happiest  in  having  written. 

t  Jerem.  xvii.  1 1  (best  in  Septuagint  and  Vulgate).  "  As  the  par- 
tridge, fostering  what  she  brought  not  forth,  so  he  that  getteth  riches, 
not  by  right  shall  leave  them  in  the  midst  of  his  days,  and  at  his  end 
shall  be  a  fooj. " 


8o  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

have  a  weaver's  beam  ;  and  on  her  shield,  instead  of 
St.  George's  Cross,  the  Milanese  boar,  semi-fleeced, 
with  the  town  of  Gennesaret  proper,  in  the  field,  and 
ihe  legend  "  In  the  best  market,"  *  and  her  corselet, 
of  leather,  folded  over  her  heart  in  the  shape  of  a 
purse,  with  thirty  slits  in  it  for  a  piece  of  money  to 
go  in  at,  on  each  day  of  the  month.  And  I  doubt  not 
but  that  people  would  come  to  see  your  exchange, 
and  its  goddess,  with  applause. 

77.  Nevertheless,  I  want  to  point  out  to  you  cer- 
tain strange  characters  in  this  goddess  of  yours.  She 
differs  from  the  great  Greek  and  Mediaeval  deities 
essentially  in  two  things  —  first,  as  to  the  continu- 
ance of  her  presumed  power;  secondly,  as  to  the 
extent  of  it. 

1st,  as  to  the  Continuance. 

The  Greek  Goddess  of  Wisdom  gave  continual 
jicrease  of  wisdom,  as  the  Christian  Spirit  of  Com- 
fort (or  Comforter)  continual  increase  of  comfort. 
There  was  no  question,  with  these,  of  any  limit  or 
cessation  of  function.  But  with  your  Agora  God- 
dess, that  is  just  the  most  important  question.  Get- 
ting on  —  but  where  to  ?  Gathering  together  —  but 
how  much  ?  Do  you  mean  to  gather  always  —  never 
to  spend  ?  If  so,  I  wish  you  joy  of  your  goddess,  for 
I  am  just  as  well  off  as  you,  without  the  trouble  of 
worshipping  her  at  all.  But  if  you  do  not  spend, 
somebody  else  will  —  somebody  else  must.  And  it 
is  because  of  this  (among  many  other  such  errors) 
that  I  have  fearlessly  declared  your  so-called  science 
of  Political   Economy  to   be   no  science ;    because, 

*  Meaning  fully,  "  We  have  brought  our  pigs  to  it." 


TRAFFIC.  81 

namely,  it  has  omitted  the  study  of  exactly  the  most 
important  branch  of  the  business  —  the  study  of 
spending.  For  spend  you  must,  and  as  much  as  you 
make,  ultimately.  You  gather  corn  ;  —  will  you  bury 
England  under  a  heap  of  grain ;  or  will  you,  when 
you  have  gathered,  finally  eat?  You  gather  gold  :  — 
will  you  make  your  house-roofs  of  it,  or  pave  your 
streets  with  it?  That  is  still  one  way  of  spending  it. 
But  if  you  keep  it,  that  you  may  get  more,  Til  give 
you  more ;  Til  give  you  all  the  gold  you  want  —  all 
you  can  imagine  —  if  you  can  tell  me  what  you'll  do 
with  it.  You  shall  have  thousands  of  gold  pieces ;  — 
thousands  of  thousands  —  millions  —  mountains,  of 
gold  :  where  will  you  keep  them  ?  Will  you  put  an 
Olympus  of  silver  upon  a  golden  Pelion  —  make 
Ossa  like  a  wart?  Do  you  think  the  rain  and  dew 
would  then  come  down  to  you,  in  the  streams  from 
such  mountains,  more  blessedly  than  they  will  down 
the  mountains  which  God  has  made  for  you,  of  moss 
and  whinstone  ?  But  it  is  not  gold  that  you  want  to 
gather!  What  is  it?  greenbacks?  No;  not  those 
neither.  What  is  it  then —  is  it  ciphers  after  a  capi- 
tal 1  ?  Cannot  you  practise  writing  ciphers,  and  write 
as  many  as  you  want?  Write  ciphers  for  an  hour 
every  morning,  in  a  big  book,  and  say  every  evening, 
I  am  worth  all  those  noughts  more  than  I  was  yester- 
day. Won't  that  do?  Well,  what  in  the  name  of 
Plutus  is  it  you  want?  Not  gold,  not  greenbacks, 
not  ciphers  after  a  capital  1?  You  will  have  to 
answer,  after  all,  "  No;  we  want,  somehow  or  other, 
money's  ■worth.''''  Well,  what  is  that?  Let  your 
Goddess  of  Getting-on  discover  it,  and  let  her  learn 
to  stay  therein. 


82  THE    CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

78.  II.  But  there  is  yet  another  question  to  be 
asked  respecting  this  Goddess  of  Getting-on.  The 
first  was  of  the  continuance  of  her  power ;  the  second 
is  of  its  extent. 

Pallas  and  the  Madonna  were  supposed  to  be  all 
the  world's  Pallas,  and  all  the  world's  Madonna. 
They  could  teach  all  men,  and  they  could  comfort  all 
men.  But,  look  strictly  into  the  nature  of  the  power 
of  your  Goddess  of  Getting-on ;  and  you  will  find  she 
is  the  Goddess  —  not  of  everybody's  getting  on  —  but 
only  of  somebody's  getting  on.  This  is  a  vital,  or 
rather  deathful,  distinction.  Examine  it  in  your  own 
ideal  of  the  state  of  national  life  which  this  Goddess 
is  to  evoke  and  maintain.  I  asked  you  what  it  was, 
when  I  was  last  here ;  *  —  you  have  never  told  me. 
Now,  shall  I  try  to  tell  you? 

79.  Your  ideal  of  human  life  then  is,  I  think,  that 
it  should  be  passed  in  a  pleasant  undulating  world,  with 
iron  and  coal  everywhere  underneath  it.  On  each 
pleasant  bank  of  this  world  is  to  be  a  beautiful  man- 
sion, with  two  wings  ;  and  stables,  and  coach-houses  .; 
a  moderately  sized  park ;  a  large  garden  and  hot- 
houses ;  and  pleasant  carriage  drives  through  the 
shrubberies.  In  this  mansion  are  to  live  the  favored 
votaries  of  the  Goddess ;  the  English  gentleman, 
with  his  gracious  wife,  and  his  beautiful  family ; 
always  able  to  have  the  boudoir  and  the  jewels  for 
the  wife,  and  the  beautiful  ball  dresses  for  the  daugh- 
ters, and  hunters  for  the  sons,  and  a  shooting  in  the 
Highlands  for  himself.     At  the  bottom  of  the  bank, 

•"The  Two  Paths,"  p.  115  (small  edition),  and  p.  99  of  vol.  x.  of 
th*e  "  Revised  Series  of  the  Entire  Works." 


TRAFFIC.  83 

is  to  be  the  mill ;  not  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
long,  with  a  steam  engine  at  each  end,  and  two  in  the 
middle,  and  a  chimney  three  hundred  feet  high.  In 
this  mill  are  to  be  in  constant  employment  from  eight 
hundred  to  a  thousand  workers,  who  never  drink, 
never  strike,  always  go  to  church  on  Sunday,  and 
always  express  themselves  in  respectful  language. 

80.  Is  not  that,  broadly,  and  in  the  main  features, 
the  kind  of  thing  you  propose  to  yourselves  ?  It  is  very 
pretty  indeed,  seen  from  above ;  not  at  all  so  pretty, 
seen  from  below.  For,  observe,  while  to  one  family 
this  deity  is  indeed  the  Goddess  of  Getting-on,  to  a 
thousand  families  she  is  the  Goddess  of  not  Getting- 
on.  "  Nay,"  you  say,  "  they  have  all  their  chance." 
Yes,  so  has  every  one  in  a  lottery,  but  there  must 
always  be  the  same  number  of  blanks.  "  Ah !  but 
in  a  lottery  it  is  not  skill  and  intelligence  which  take 
the  lead,  but  blind  chance."  What  then!  do  you 
think  the  old  practice,  that  "  they  should  take  who 
have  the  power,  and  they  should  keep  who  can,"  is 
less  iniquitous,  when  the  power  has  become  power  of 
brains  instead  of  fist?  and  that,  though  we  may  not 
take  advantage  of  a  child's  or  a  woman's  weakness, 
we  may  of  a  man's  foolishness?  "Nay,  but  finally, 
work  must  be  done,  and  some  one  must  be  at  the 
top,  some  one  at  the  bottom."  Granted,  my  friends. 
Work  must  always  be,  and  captains  of  work  must 
always  be  ;  and  if  you  in  the  least  remember  the  tone 
of  any  of  my  writings,  you  must  know  that  they  are 
thought  unfit  for  this  age,  because  they  are  always 
insisting  on  need  of  government,  and  speaking  with 
scorn  of  liberty.     But  I  beg  you  to  observe  that  there 


84  THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

is  a  wide  difference  between  being  captains  or  gov- 
ernors of  work,  and  taking  the  profits  of  it.  It  does 
not  follow,  because  you  are  general  of  an  army,  that 
you  are  to  take  all  the  treasure,  or  land,  it  wins  (if  it 
fight  for  treasure  or  land)  ;  neither,  because  you  are 
king  of  a  nation,  that  you  are  to  consume  all  the 
profits  of  the  nation's  work.  Real  kings,  on  the  con- 
trary, are  known  invariably  by  their  doing  quite  the 
reverse  of  this,  —  by  their  taking  the  least  possible 
quantity  of  the  nation's  work  for  themselves.  There 
is  no  test  of  real  kinghood  so  infallible  as  that.  Does 
the  crowned  creature  live  simply,  bravely,  unostenta- 
tiously ?  probably  he  is  a  King.  Does  he  cover  his 
body  with  jewels,  and  his  t^le  with  delicates?  in  all 
probability  he  is  not  a  King.  It  is  possible  he  may 
be,  as  Solomon  was ;  but  that  is  when  the  nation 
shares  his  splendor  with  him.  Solomon  made  gold, 
not  only  to  be'  in  his  own  palace  as  stones,  but  to  be 
in  Jerusalem  as  stones.  But  even  so,  for  the  most 
part,  these  splendid  kinghoods  expire  in  ruin,  and 
only  the  true  kinghoods  live,  which  are  of  royal 
laborers  governing  loyal  laborers ;  who,  both  leadinit 
rough  lives,  establish  the  true  dynasties.  Conclu- 
sively you  will  find  that  because  you  are  king  of  a 
nation,  it  does  not  follow  that  you  are  to  gather  iot 
yourself  all  the  wealth  of  that  nation ;  neither,  be- 
cause you  are  king  of  a  small  part  of  the  nation,  and 
lord  over  the  means  of  its  maintenance  —  over  field, 
or  mill,  or  mine,  —  are  you  to  take  all  the  produce  ol 
that  piece  of  the  foundation  of  national  existence  for 
yourself. 
81.   You  will  tell  me  I  need  not  preach  against 


TRAFFIC.  85 

these  things,  for  I  cannot  mend  tfiem.  No,  good 
friends,  I  cannot ;  but  you  can,  and  you  will ;  or 
something  else  can  and  will.  Even  good  things 
have  no  abiding  power  —  and  shall  these  evil  things 
persist  in  victorious  evil?  All  history  shows,  on  the 
contrary,  that  to  be  the  exact  thing  they  never  can 
do.  Change  must  come  ;  but  it  is  ours  to  determine 
whether  change  of  growth,  or  change  of  death.  Shall 
the  Parthenon  be  in  ruins  on  its  rock,  and  Bolton 
priory  in  its  meadow,  but  these  mills  of  yours  be  the 
consummation  of  the  buildings  of  the  earth,  and  their 
wheels  be  as  the  wheels  of  eternity  ?  Think  you  that 
"  men  may  come,  and  men  may  go,"  but  —  mills  — 
go  on  forever?  Not  so;  out  of  these,  better  or 
worse  shall  come  ;  and  it  is  for  you  to  choose  which. 
82.  I  know  that  none  of  this  wrong  is  done  with 
deliberate  purpose.  I  know,  on  the  contrary,  that 
you  wish  your  workmen  well ;  that  you  do  much  for 
them,  and  that  you  desire  to  do  more  for  them,  if 
you  saw  your  way  to  such  benevolence  safely.  I 
know  that  even  all  this  wrong  and  misery  are  brought 
about  by  a  warped  sense  of  duty,  each  of  you  striving 
to  do  his  best ;  but  unhappily,  not  knowing  for  whom 
this  best  should  be  done.  And  all  our  hearts  have 
been  betrayed  by  the  plausible  impiety  of  the  modern 
economist,  that  "To  do  the  best  for  yourself,  is 
finally  to  do  the  best  for  others."  Friends,  our  great 
Master  said  not  so ;  and  most  absolutely  we  shall 
find  this  world  is  not  made  so.  Indeed,  to  do  the 
best  for  others,  is  finally  to  do  the  best  for  ourselves ; 
hut  it  will  not  do  to  have  our  eyes  fixed  on  that  issue. 
The  Pagans   had  got  beyond   that.     Hear  what  a 


86  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

Pagan  says  of  this  matter ;  hear  what  were,  perhaps, 
the  last  written  words  of  Plato,  —  if  not  the  last 
actually  written  (for  this  we  cannot  know),  yet 
assuredly  in  fact  and  power  his  parting  words  —  in 
which,  endeavoring  to  give  full  crowning  and  harmo- 
nious close  to  all  his  thoughts,  and  to  speak  the  sum 
of  them  by  the  imagined  sentence  of  ne  Great 
Spirit,  his  strength  and  his  heart  fail  him,  and  the 
words  cease,  broken  off  forever. 

83.  They  are  at  the  close  of  the  dialogue  called 
"  Critias,"  in  which  he  describes,  partly  from  real 
tradition,  partly  in  ideal  dream,  the  early  state  of 
Athens;  and  the  genesis,  and  order,  and  religion, 
of  the  fabled  isle  of  Atlantis ;  in  which  genesis  he 
conceives  the  same  first  perfection  and  final  degen- 
eracy of  man,  which  in  our  own  Scriptural  tradition 
is  expressed  by  saying  that  the  Sons  of  God  inter- 
married with  the  daughters  of  men,  for  he  supposes 
the  earliest  race  to  have  been  indeed  the  chil- 
dren of  God ;  and  to  have  corrupted  themselves, 
until  "their  spot  was  not  the  spot  of  his  children." 
And  this,  he  says,  was  the  end  ;  that  indeed  "  through 
many  generations,  so  long  as  the  God's  nature  in 
them  yet  was  full,  they  were  submissive  to  the  sacred 
laws,  and  carried  themselves  lovingly  to  all  that  had 
kindred  with  them  in  divineness  ;  for  their  uttermost 
spirit  was  faithful  and  true,  and  in  every  wise  great ; 
so  that,  in  all  meekness  of  wisdom,  they  dealt  with 
each  other,  and  took  all  the  chances  of  life ;  and  de- 
spising all  things  except  virtue,  they  cared  little  what 
happened  day  by  day,  and  bore  lightly  the  burden  0/ 
gold  and  of  possessions ;   for  they  saw  that,  if  only 


TRAFFIC.  87 

their  common  love  and  virtue  increased,  all  these 
things  would  be  increased  together  with  them ;  but 
to  set  their  esteem  and  ardent  pursuit  upon  material 
possession  would  be  to  lose  that  first,  and  their  vir- 
tue and  affection  together  with  it.  And  by  such 
reasoning,  and  what  of  the  divine  nature  remained 
in  them,  they  gained  all  this  greatness  of  which  we 
have  already  told  ;  but  when  the  God's  part  of  them 
faded  and  became  extinct,  being  mixed  again  and 
again,  and  effaced  by  the  prevalent  mortality ;  and  the 
human  nature  at  last  exceeded,  they  then  became 
unable  to  endure  the  courses  of  fortune ;  and  fell  into 
shapelessness  of  life,  and  baseness  in  the  sight  of  him 
who  could  see,  having  lost  everything  that  was  fairest 
of  their  honor ;  while  to  the  blind  hearts  which  could 
not  discern  the  true  life,  tending  to  happiness,  it 
seemed  that  they  were  then  chiefly  noble  and  happy, 
being  filled  with  all  iniquity  of  inordinate  possession 
and  power.  Whereupon,  the  God  of  gods,  whose 
Kinghood  is  in  laws,  beholding  a  once  just  nation 
thus  cast  into  misery,  and  desiring  to  lay  such  pun- 
ishment upon  them  as  might  make  them  repent  into 
restraining,  gathered  together  all  the  'gods  into  his 
dwelling-place,  which  from  heaven's  centre  overlooks 
whatever  has  part  in  creation ;  and  having  assembled 
them,  he  said  "  — 

84.  The  rest  is  silence.  Last  words  of  the  chief 
wisdom  of  the  heathen,  spoken  of  this  idol  of 
riches ;  this  idol  of  yours ;  this  golden  image  high 
by  measureless  cubits,  set  up  where  your  green  fields 
of  England  are  furnace-burnt  into  the  likeness  of  the 
plain  of  Dura :  this  idol,  forbidden  to  us,  first  of  all 


88  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

idols,  by  our  own  Master  and  faith  ;  forbidden  to  us 
also  by  every  human  lip  that  has  ever,  in  any  age  or 
people,  been  accounted  of  as  able  to  speak  according 
to  the  purposes  of  God.  Continue  to  make  that  for- 
bidden deity  your  principal  one,  and  soon  no  more 
art,  no  more  science,  no  more  pleasure  will  be  possi- 
ble. Catastrophe  will  come ;  or  worse  than  catas- 
trophe, slow  mouldering  and  withering  into  Hades. 
But  if  you  can  fix  some  conception  of  a  true  human 
state  of  life  to  be  striven  for —  life  good  for  all  men  as 
for  yourselves  —  if  you  can  determine  some  honest 
and  simple  order  of  existence  ;  following  those  trodden 
ways  of  wisdom,  which  are  pleasantness,  and  seek 
ing  her  quiet  and  withdrawn  paths,  which  are  peace  ;  * 
—  then,  and  so  sanctifying  wealth  into  "common- 
wealth," all  your  art,  your  literature,  your  daily  labors 
your  domestic  affection,  and  citizen's  duty,  will  joir 
and  increase  into  one  magnificent  harmony.  You 
will  know  then  how  to  build,  well  enough ;  you  will 
build  with  stone  well,  but  with  flesh  better ;  temples 
not  made  with  hands,  but  riveted  of  hearts  ;  and  that 
kind  of  marble,  crimson-veined,  is  indeed  eternal. 

*  I  imagine  the  Hebrew  chant  merely  intends  passionate  repetition, 
and  not  a  distinction  of  this  somewhat  fanciful  kind;  yet  we  may 
profitably  make  it  in  reading  the  English. 


LECTURE    IIL 


LECTURE   III. 

PVAJi. 

Delivered  at  the  Royal  Military  Academy  ^  Woolwich^ 
1865. 

85.  Young  soldiers,  I  do  not  doubt  but  that  many 
of  you  came  unwillingly  to-night,  and  many  in  merely 
contemptuous  curiosity,  to  hear  what  a  writer  on 
painting  could  possibly  say,  or  would  venture  to  say, 
respecting  your  great  art  of  war.  You  may  well 
think  within  yourselves,  that  a  painter  might,  per- 
haps without  immodesty,  lecture  younger  painters 
upon  painting,  but  not  young  lawyers  upon  law,  nor 
young  physicians  upon  medicine  —  least  of  all,  it 
may  seem  to  you,  young  warriors  upon  war.  And, 
indeed,  when  I  was  asked  to  address  you,  I  declined 
at  first,  and  declined  long ;  for  I  felt  that  you  would 
not  be  interested  in  my  special  business,  and  would 
certainly  think  there  was  small  need  for  me  to  come 
to  teach  you  yours.  Nay,  I  knew  that  there  ought 
to  be  no  such  need,  for  the  great  veteran  soldiers  of 
England  are  now  men  every  way  so  thoughtful,  so 
noble,  and  so  good,  that  no  other  teaching  than 
their  knightly  example,  and  their  few  words  of  grave 
and  tried  counsel  should  be  either  necessary  for  you, 
or  even,  without  assurance  of  due  modesty  in  the 
offerer,  endured  by  you. 

91 


92         THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

86.  But  being  asked,  not  once  nor  twice,  I  have 
not  ventured  persistently  to  refuse ;  and  I  will  try,  in 
very  few  words,  to  lay  before  you  some  reason  why 
you  should  accept  my  excuse,  and  hear  me  patiently. 
You  may  imagine  that  your  work  is  wholly  foreign  to, 
and  separate  from  mine.  So  far  from  that,  all  the 
pure  and  noble  arts  of  peace  are  founded  on  war ;  no 
great  art  ever  yet  rose  on  earth,  but  among  a  nation 
of  soldiers.  There  is  no  art  among  a  shepherd 
people,  if  it  remains  at  peace.  There  is  no  art 
among  an  agricultural  people,  if  it  remains  at  peace. 
Commerce  is  barely  consistent  with  fine  art ;  but  can- 
not produce  it.  Manufacture  not  only  is  unable  to 
produce  it,  but  invariably  destroys  whatever  seeds  of 
it  exist.  There  is  no  great  art  possible  to  a  nation 
but  that  which  is  based  on  battle. 

87.  Now,  though  I  hope  you  love  fighting  for  its 
own  sake,  you  must,  I  imagine,  be  surprised  at  my 
assertion  that  there  is  any  such  good  fruit  of  fight- 
ing. You  supposed,  probably,  that  your  office  was 
to  defend  the  works  of  peace,  but  certainly  not  to 
found  them :  nay,  the  common  course  of  war,  you 
may  have  thought,  was  only  to  destroy  them.  And 
truly,  I  who  tell  you  this  of  the  use  of  war,  should 
have  been  the  last  of  men  to  tell  you  so,  had  I 
trusted  my  own  experience  only.  Hear  why :  I  have 
given  a  considerable  part  of  my  life  to  the  investiga- 
tion of  Venetian  painting,  and  the  result  of  that  in- 
quiry was  my  fixing  upon  one  man  as  the  greatest  of 
all  Venetians,  and  therefore,  as  I  believed,  of  all 
painters  whatsoever.  I  formed  this  faith  (whether 
right  or  wrong  matters  at  present  nothing),  in  the 


fVyi/!.  93 

supremacy  of  the  painter  Tintoret,  under  ?  roof  cov- 
ered with  his  pictures ;  and  of  those  pictures,  three 
of  the  noblest  were  then  in  the  form  of  shreds  of 
ragged  canvas,  mixed  up  with  the  laths  of  the  roof, 
rent  through  by  three  Austrian  shells.  Now  it  is  no^. 
every  lecturer  who  could  tell  you  that  he  had  seen 
three  of  his  favorite  pictures  torn  to  rags  by  bomb- 
shells. And  after  such  a  sight,  it  is  not  every  lec- 
turer who  would  tell  you  that,  nevertheless,  war  was 
the  foundation  of  all  great  art. 

88.  Yet  the  conclusion  is  inevitable,  from  any 
careful  comparison  of  the  states  of  great  historic 
races  at  different  periods.  Merely  to  show  you  what 
I  mean,  I  will  sketch  for  you,  very  briefly,  the  broad 
steps  of  the  advance  of  the  best  art  of  the 
world.  The  first  dawn  of  it  is  in  Egypt ;  and  the 
power  of  it  is  founded  on  the  perpetual  contemplation 
of  death,  and  of  future  judgment,  by  the  mind  of  a 
nation  of  which  the  ruling  caste  were  priests,  and 
the  second,  soldiers.  The  greatest  works  produced 
by  them  are  sculptures  of  their  kings  going  out  to 
battle,  or  receiving  the  homage  of  conquered  armies. 
And  you  must  remember  also,  as  one  of  the  great 
keys  to  the  splendor  of  the  Egyptian  nation,  that 
the  priests  were  not  occupied  in  theology  only. 
Their  theology  was  the  basis  of  practical  government 
and  law ;  so  that  they  were  not  so  much  priests  as 
religious  judges  ;  the  office  of  Samuel,  among  the  Jews, 
being  as  nearly  as  possible  correspondent  to  theirs. 

89.  All  the  rudiments  of  art  then,  and  much  more 
than  the  rudiments  of  all  science,  are  laid  first  by 
this  great  warrior-nation,  which  held  in  contempt  all 


94  THE    CROWN  OF    WILD   OLIVE. 

mechanical  trades,  and  in  absolute  hatred  the  peace- 
ful life  of  shepherds.  From  Egypt  art  passes 
directly  into  Greece,  where  all  poetry,  and  all  paint- 
ing, are  nothing  else  than  the  description,  praise,  or 
dramatic  representation  of  war,  or  of  the  exercises 
which  prepare  for  it,  in  their  connection  with  offices 
of  religion.  All  Greek  institutions  had  first  respect 
to  war ;  and  their  conception  of  it,  as  one  necessary 
office  of  all  human  and  divine  life,  is  expressed 
simply  by  the  images  of  their  guiding  gods.  Apollo 
is  the  god  of  all  wisdom  of  the  intellect ;  he  bears 
the  arrow  and  the  bow,  before  he  bears  the  lyre. 
Again,  Athena  is  the  goddess  of  all  wisdom  in  conduct. 
It  is  by  the  helmet  and  the  shield,  oftener  than  by  the 
shuttle,  that  she  is  distinguished  from  other  deities. 

90.  There  were,  however,  two  great  differences 
in  principle  between  the  Greek  and  the  Egyptian 
theories  of  policy.  In  Greece  there  was  no  soldier 
caste  ;  every  citizen  was  necessarily  a  soldier.  And, 
again,  while  the  Greeks  rightly  despised  mechanical 
arts  as  much  as  the  Egyptians,  they  did  not  make 
the  fatal  mistake  of  despising  agricultural  and  pas- 
toral life ;  but  perfectly  honored  both.  These  two 
conditions  of  truer  thought  raise  them  quite  into  the 
highest  rank  of  wise  manhood  that  has  yet  been 
reached ;  for  all  our  great  arts,  and  nearly  all  our 
great  thoughts,  have  been  borrowed  or  derived  from 
them.  Take  away  from  us  what  they  have  given ; 
and  I  hardly  can  imagine  how  low  the  modern  * 
European  would  stand. 

•  The  modem,  observe,  because  we  have  lost  all  inheritance  from 
Florence  or  Venice,  and  are  now  pensioners  upon  the  Greeks  only. 


IVA/^.  95 

gi.  Now,  you  are  to  remember,  in  passing  to  the 
next  phase  of  history,  that  though  you  musi  have  war 
to  produce  art  —  you  must  also  have  much  more  than 
war ;  namely,  an  art-instinct  or  genius  in  the  people  ; 
and  that,  though  all  the  talent  for  painting  in  the 
world  won't  make  painters  of  you,  unless  you  have 
a  gift  for  fighting  as  well,  you  may  have  the  gift  for 
fighting,  and  none  for  painting.  Now,  in  the  next 
great  dynasty  of  soldiers,  the  art-instinct  is  wholly 
wanting.  I  have  not  yet  investigated  the  Roman 
character  enough  to  tell  you  the  causes  of  this ;  but  I 
believe,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem  to  you,  that, 
however  truly  the  Roman  might  say  of  himself  that 
he  was  born  of  Mars,  and  suckled  by  the  wolf,  he 
was  nevertheless,  at  heart,  more  of  a  farmer  than  a 
soldier.  The  exercises  of  war  were  with  him  practi- 
cal, not  poetical ;  his  poetry  was  in  domestic  life 
only,  and  the  object  of  battle,  "  pacis  imponere 
morem."  And  the  arts  are  extinguished  in  his 
hands,  and  do  not  rise  again,  until,  with  Gothic 
chivalry,  there  comes  back  into  the  mind  of  Europe 
a  passionate  delight  in  war  itself,  for  the  sake  of  war. 
And  then,  with  the  romantic  knighthood  which  can 
imagine  no  other  noble  employment,  —  under  the 
fighting  kings  of  France,  England,  and  Spain ;  and 
under  the  fighting  dukeships  and  citizenships  of  Italy, 
art  is  born  again,  and  rises  to  her  height  in  the  great 
valleys  of  Lombardy  and  Tuscany,  through  which 
there  flows  not  a  single  stream,  from  all  their  Alps 
or  Apennines,  that  did  not  once  run  dark  red  from 
battle :  and  it  reaches  its  culminating  glory  in  the 
city  which  gave  to  history  the  most  intense  type  of 


g6  THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

soldiership  yet  seen  among  men ;  —  the  city  whose 
armies  were  led  in  their  assault  by  their  king,  led 
through  it  to  victory  by  their  king,*  and  so  led, 
though  that  king  of  theirs  was  blind,  and  in  the 
extremity  of  his  age. 

92.  And  from  this  time  forward,  as  peace  is  estab- 
lished or  extended  in  Europe,  the  arts  decline.  They 
reach  an  unparalleled  pitch  of  costliness,  but  lose  their 
life,  enlist  themselves  at  last  on  the  side  of  luxury 
and  various  corruption,  and,  among  wholly  tranquil 
nations,  wither  utterly  away  ;  remaining  only  in  par- 
tial practice  among  races  who,  like  the  French  and 
us,  have  still  the  minds,  though  we  cannot  all  live 
the  lives,  of  soldiers. 

93.  "  It  may  be  so,"  I  can  suppose  that  a  philan- 
thropist might  exclaim.  "Perish  then  the  arts,  if 
they  can  flourish  only  at  such  a  cost.  What  worth 
is  there  in  toys  of  canvas  and  stone,  if  compared  to 
the  joy  and  peace  of  artless  domestic  life  ?  "  And 
the  answer  is  —  truly,  in  themselves,  none.  But  as 
expressions  of  the  highest  state  of  the  human  spirit, 
their  worth  is  infinite.  As  results  they  may  be 
worthless,  but,  as  signs,  they  are  above  price.  For 
it  is  an  assured  truth  that,  whenever  the  faculties  of 
men  are  at  their  fulness,  they  must  express  them- 
selves by  art ;  and  to  say  that  a  state  is  without  such 
expression,  is  to  say  that  it  is  sunk  from  its  proper 
level  of  manly  nature.  So  that,  when  I  tell  you  that 
war  is  the  foundation  of  all  the  arts,  I  mean  also  that 
it  is  the  foundation  of  all  the  high  virtues  and 
faculties  of  men. 

*  Henry  Dandolo :  the  King  of  Bohemia  is  very  grands  *oo,  and  by 
the  issue,  his  knighthood  is,  to  us,  more  memorable. 


iVA/i.  97 

94.  It  is  very  strange  to  me  to  discover  this  ;  and 
very  dreadful  —  but  I  saw  it  to  be  quite  an  undeniable 
fact.  The  common  notion  that  peace  and  the  virtues 
of  civil  life  flourished  together,  I  found  to  be  wholly 
untenable.  Peace  and  the  vices  of  civil  life  only 
flourish  together.  We  talk  of  peace  and  learning, 
and  of  peace  and  plenty,  and  of  peace  and  civilization  ; 
but  I  found  that  those  were  not  the  words  which  the 
Muse  of  History  coupled  together :  that  on  her  lips, 
the  words  were  —  peace  and  sensuality,  peace  and 
selfishness,  peace  and  corruption,  peace  and  death. 
I  found,  in  brief,  that  all  great  nations  learned  their 
truth  of  word,  and  strength  of  thought,  in  war;  that 
they  were  nourished  in  war,  and  wasted  by  peace ; 
taught  by  war,  and  deceived  by  peace ;  trained  by 
war,  and  betrayed  by  peace ;  —  in  a  word,  that  they 
were  born  in  war  and  expired  in  peace. 

95.  Yet  now  note  carefully,  in  the  second  place, 
it  is  not  a/i  war  of  which  this  can  be  said  —  nor  all 
dragon's  teeth,  which,  sown,  will  start  up  into  men. 
It  is  not  the  ravage  of  a  barbarian  wolf-flock,  as  under 
Genseric  or  Suwarrow ;  nor  the  habitual  restlessness 
and  rapine  of  mountaineers,  as  on  the  old  borders  of 
Scotland ;  nor  the  occasional  struggle  of  a  strong 
peaceful  nation  for  its  life,  as  in  the  wars  of  the  Swiss 
with  Austria ;  nor  the  contest  of  merely  ambitious 
nations  for  extent  of  power,  as  in  the  wars  of  France 
under  Napoleon,  or  the  just  terminated  war  in  America. 
None  of  these  forms  of  war  build  anything  but  tombs. 
But  the  creative  or  foundational  war  is  that  in  which 
the  natural  restlessness  and  love  of  contest  among 
men  are  disciplined,  by  consent,  into  modes  of  beau- 


98  THE   CROWN   Ot    WILD    OLIVE. 

tiful  —  though  it  may  be  fatal  —  play :  in  which  the 
natural  ambition  and  love  of  power  of  men  are  dis- 
ciplined into  the  aggressive  conquest  of  surrounding 
evil :  and  in  which  the  natural  instincts  of  self-defence 
are  sanctified  by  the  nobleness  of  the  institutions, 
and  purity  of  the  households,  which  they  are  appointed 
to  defend.  To  such  war  as  this  all  men  are  born ; 
in  such  war  as  this  any  man  may  happily  die ;  and 
out  of  such  war  as  this  have  arisen  throughout  the 
extent  of  past  ages,  all  the  highest  sanctities  and 
virtues  of  humanity. 

1  shall  therefore  divide  the  war  of  which  I  would 
speak  to  you  into  three  heads.  War  for  exercise  or 
p'ay ;  war  for  dominion  ;  and,  war  for  defence. 

96.  I.  And  first,  of  war  for  exercise  or  play.  I 
speak  of  it  primarily,  in  this  light,  because,  through  all 
past  history,  manly  war  has  been  more  an  exercise 
than  anything  else,  among  the  classes  who  cause,  and 
proclaim  it.  It  is  not  a  game  to  the  conscript,  or  the 
pressed  sailor ;  but  neither  of  these  are  the  causers  of 
it.  To  the  governor  who  determines  that  war  shall 
be,  and  to  the  youths  who  voluntarily  adopt  it  as  their 
profession,  it  has  always  been  a  grand  pastime ;  and 
chiefly  pursued  because  they  had  nothing  else  to  do. 
And  this  is  true  without  any  exception.  No  king 
whose  mind  was  fiilly  occupied  with  the  development 
of  the  inner  resources  of  his  kingdom,  or  with  any 
other  sufficing  subject  of  thought,  ever  entered  into 
war  but  on  compulsion.  No  youth  who  was  earnestly 
busy  with  any  peaceful  subject  of  study,  or  set  op 
any  serviceable  course  of  action,  ever  voluntarily 
became  a  soldier.     Occupy  him  early  and  wisely,  in 


WAR.  99 

agricuItu^e  or  business,  in  science  or  in  literature, 
and  he  will  never  think  of  war  otherwise  than  as  a 
calamity.*  But  leave  him  idle ;  and,  the  more  brave 
and  active  and  capable  he  is  by  nature,  the  more  he 
will  thirst  for  some  appointed  field  for  action ;  and 
find,  in  the  passion  and  peril  of  battle,  the  only 
satisfying  fulfilment  of  his  unoccupied  being.  And 
from  the  earliest  incipient  civilization  until  now,  the 
population  of  the  earth  divides  itself,  when  you  look 
at  it  widely,  into  two  races ;  one  of  workers,  and  the 
other  of  players  —  one  tilling  the  ground,  manufac- 
turing, building,  and  otherwise  providing  for  the 
necessities  of  life  ;  —  the  other  part  proudly  idle,  and 
continually  therefore  needing  recreation,  in  which 
they  use  the  productive  and  laborious  orders  partly 
as  their  cattle,  and  partly  as  their  puppets  or  pieces 
in  the  game  of  death. 

97-1  Now,  remember,  whatever  virtue  or  goodli- 
ness  there  may  be  in  this  game  of  war,  rightly  played, 
there  is  none  when  you  thus  play  it  with  a  multitude 
of  human  pawns. 

If  you,  the  gentlemen  of  this  or  any  other  kingdom, 
choose  to  make  your  pastime  of  contest,  do  so,  and 
welcome ;  but  set  not  up  these  unhappy  peasant- 
pieces  upon  the  checker  of  forest  and  field.  If  the 
wager  is  to  be  of  death,  lay  it  on  your  own  heads,  not 

*  A  wholesome  calamity,  observe,  not  to  be  shrunk  from,  though 
not  to  be  provoked. 

t  I  dislike  more  and  more  every  day  the  declamatory  forms  in 
which  what  I  most  desired  to  make  impressive  was  arranged  for  oral 
delivery,  but  these  two  paragraphs,  97  and  98,  sacrifice  no  accuracy  in 
their  endeavor  to  be  pompous,  and  are  among  the  most  importantly 
true  passages  I  have  ever  written. 


lOO        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

theirs.  A  goodly  struggle  in  the  Olympic  dust, 
though  it  be  the  dust  of  the  grave,  the  gods  will  look 
upon,  and  be  with  you  in ;  but  they  will  not  be  with 
you,  if  you  sit  on  the  sides  of  the  amphitheatre,  whose 
steps  are  the  mountains  of  earth,  whose  arena  its 
valleys,  to  urge  your  peasant  millions  into  gladiatorial 
war.  You  also,  you  tender  and  delicate  women,  for 
whom,  and  by  whose  command,  all  true  battle  has 
been,  and  must  ever  be ;  you  would  perhaps  shrink 
now,  though  you  need  not,  from  the  thought  of  sit- 
ting as  queens  above  set  lists  where  the  jousting  game 
might  be  mortal.  How  much  more,  then,  ought  you 
to  shrink  from  the  thought  of  sitting  above  a  theatre 
pit  in  which  even  a  few  condemned  slaves  were  slay- 
ing each  other  only  for  your  delight !  And  do  you 
not  shrink  from  iki^  fact  of  sitting  above  a  theatre  pit, 
where,  —  not  condemned  slaves,  —  but  the  best  and 
bravest  of  the  poor  sons  of  your  people,  slay  each 
other,  —  not  man  to  man,  —  as  the  coupled  gladiators  ; 
but  race  to  race,  in  duel  of  generations  ?  You  would 
tell  me,  perhaps,  that  you  do  not  sit  to  see  this ;  and 
it  is  indeed  true,  that  the  women  of  Europe  —  those 
who  have  no  heart-interest  of  their  own  at  peril  in  the 
contest  —  draw  the  curtains  of  their  boxes,  and  muffle 
the  openings ;  so  that  from  the  pit  of  the  circus  of 
slaughter  there  may  reach  them  only  at  intervals  a 
half-heard  cry  and  a  murmur  as  of  the  wind's  sighing, 
when  myriads  of  souls  expire.  They  shut  out  the 
death-cries ;  and  are  happy,  and  talk  wittily  among 
themselves.  That  is  the  utter  literal  fact  of  what  our 
ladies  do  in  their  pleasant  lives. 
98.   Nay,  you  might  answer,  speaking  with  them 


fVA/?.  lOi 

—  "  We  do  not  let  these  wars  come  to  pass  for  our 
play,  nor  by  our  carelessness  ;  we  cannot  help  them. 
How  can  any  final  quarrel  of  nations  be  settled  other- 
wise than  by  war  ?  " 

I  cannot  now  delay  to  tell  you  how  political  quarrels 
might  be  otherwise  settled.  But  grant  that  they 
cannot.  Grant  that  no  law  of  reason  can  be  under- 
stood by  nations ;  no  law  of  justice  submitted  to 
by  them :  and  that,  while  questions  of  a  few  acres, 
and  of  petty  cash,  can  be  determined  by  truth  and 
equity,  the  questions  which  are  to  issue  in  the  perish- 
ing or  saving  of  kingdoms  can  be  determined  only  by 
the  truth  of  the  sword,  and  the  equity  of  the  rifle. 
Grant  this,  and  even  then,  judge  if  it  will  always  be 
necessary  for  you  to  put  your  quarrel  into  the  hearts 
of  your  poor,  and  sign  your  treaties  with  peasants' 
blood.  You  would  be  ashamed  to  do  this  in  your  own 
private  position  and  power.  Why  should  you  not  be 
ashamed  also  to  do  it  in  public  place  and  power?  If 
you  quarrel  with  your  neighbor,  and  the  quarrel  be 
indeterminable  by  law,  and  mortal,  you  and  he  do  not 
send  your  footmen  to  Battersea  fields  to  fight  it  out ; 
nor  do  you  set  fire  to  his  tenants'  cottages,  nor  spoil 
their  goods.  You  fight  out  your  quarrel  yourselves, 
and  at  your  own  danger,  if  at  all.  And  you  do  not 
think  it  materially  affects  the  arbitrament  that  one  of 
you  has  a  larger  household  than  the  other ;  so  that,  if 
the  servants  or  tenants  were  brought  into  the  field 
with  their  masters,  the  issue  of  the  contest  could  not 
be  doubtful  ?  You  either  refuse  the  private  duel,  or 
you  practise  it  under  laws  of  honor,  not  of  physical 
force  ;  that  so  it  may  be,  in  a  manner,  justly  concluded 


I02         THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

Now  the  just  or  unjust  conclusion  of  the  private  feud 
is  of  little  moment,  while  the  just  or  unjust  conclusion 
of  the  public  feud  is  of  eternal  moment :  and  yet,  in 
this  public  quarrel,  you  take  your  servants'  sons  from 
their  arms  to  fight  for  it,  and  your  servants'  food 
from  their  lips  to  support  it ;  and  the  black  seals  on 
the  parchment  of  your  treaties  of  peace  are  the 
deserted  hearth  and  the  fruitless  field. 

99.  There  is  a  ghastly  ludicrousness  in  this,  as 
there  is  mostly  in  these  wide  and  universal  crimes. 
Hear  the  statement  of  the  very  fact  of  it  in  the 
most  literal  words  of  the  greatest  of  our  English 
thinkers :  — 

"  What,  speaking  in  quite  unofficial  language,  is  the 
net  purport  and  upshot  of  war  ?  To  my  own  knowl- 
edge, for  example,  there  dwell  and  toil,  in  the  British 
village  of  Dumdrudge,  usually  some  five  hundred 
souls.  From  these,  by  certain  'natural  enemies' of 
the  French,  there  are  successively  selected,  during 
the  French  war,  say  thirty  able-bodied  men.  Dum- 
drudge, at  her  own  expense,  has  suckled  and  nursed 
them ;  she  has,  not  without  difficulty  and  sorrow,  fed 
them  up  to  manhood,  and  even  trained  them  to  crafts, 
so  that  one  can  weave,  another  build,  another  ham- 
mer, and  the  weakest  can  stand  under  thirty  stone 
avoirdupois.  Nevertheless,  amid  much  weeping  and 
swearing,  they  are  selected ;  all  dressed  in  red ;  and 
shipped  away,  at  the  public  charges,  some  two  thou- 
sand miles,  or  say  only  to  the  south  of  Spain ;  and 
fed  there  till  wanted. 

"  And  now  to  that  same  spot  in  the  south  of  Spain 
are  thirty  similar  French  artisans,  from  a   French 


IFA/?.  103 

Dumdrudge,  in  like  manner  wending ;  till  at  length, 
after  infinite  effort,  the  two  parties  come  into  actual, 
juxtaposition  ;  and  Thirty  stands  fronting  Thirty,  each 
with  a  gun  in  his  hand. 

"  Straightway  the  word  '  Fire  !'  is  given,  and  they 
blow  the  souls  out  of  one  another,  and  in  place  of 
sixty  brisk  useful  craftsmen,  the  world  has  sixty  dead 
carcases,  which  it  must  bury,  and  anon  shed  tears 
for.  Had  these  men  any  quarrel  ?  Busy  as  the  devil 
is,  not  the  smallest !  They  lived  far  enough  apart ; 
were  the  entirest  strangers ;  nay,  in  so  wide  a  uni- 
verse, there  was  even,  unconsciously,  by  commerce, 
some  mutual  helpfulness  between  them.  How  then  ? 
Simpleton !  their  governors  had  fallen  out ;  and  in- 
stead of  shooting  one  another,  had  the  cunning  to 
make  these  poor  blockheads  shoot."  (Sartor  Resar- 
tus.) 

100.  Positively,  then,  gentlemen,  the  game  of 
battle  must  not,  and  shall  not,  ultimately  be  played 
this  way.  But  should  it  be  played  any  way  ?  Should 
it,  if  not  by  your  servants,  be  practised  by  yourselves  ? 
I  think,  yes.  Both  history  and  human  instinct  seem 
alike  to  say,  yes.  All  healthy  men  like  fighting,  and 
like  the  sense  of  danger ;  all  brave  women  like  to 
hear  of  their  fighting,  and  of  their  facing  danger. 
This  is  a  fixed  instinct  in  the  fine  race  of  them ;  and 
I  cannot  help  fancying  that  fair  fight  is  the  best  play 
for  them  ;  and  that  a  tournament  was  a  better  game 
than  a  steeple-chase.  The  time  may  perhaps  come 
in  France  as  well  as  here,  for  universal  hurdle-races 
and  cricketing :  but  I  do  not  think  universal  crick- 
ets will  bring  out  the  best  qualities  of  the  nobles  oi 


I04        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD    OLIVE. 

either  country.  I  use,  in  such  question,  the  test 
which  I  have  adopted,  of  the  connection  of  war  with 
other  arts ;  and  I  reflect  how,  as  a  sculptor,  1  should 
feel,  if  I  were  asked  to  design  a  monument  for  a  dead 
knight,  in  Westminister  abbey,  with  a  carving  of  a 
bat  at  one  end,  and  a  ball  at  the  other.  It  may  be 
the  remains  in  me  only  of  savage  Gothic  prejudice  ; 
but  1  had  rather  carve  it  with  a  shield  at  one  end,  and 
a  sword  at  the  other.  And  this,  observe,  with  no  re- 
ference whatever  to  any  story  of  duty  done,  or  cause 
defended.  Assume  the  knight  merely  to  have  ridden 
out  occasionally  to  fight  his  neighbor  for  exercise ; 
assume  him  even  a  soldier  of  fortune,  and  to  have 
gained  his  bread,  and  filled  his  purse,  at  the  sword's 
point.  Still,  I  feel  as  if  it  were,  somehow,  grander 
and  worthier  in  him  to  have  made  his  bread  by  sword 
play  than  any  other  play  ;  I  had  rather  he  had  made 
it  by  thrusting  than  by  batting ;  —  much  rather,  than 
by  betting.  Much  rather  that  he  should  ride  war 
horses,  than  back  race  horses  ;  and  —  I  say  it  sternly 
and  deliberately  —  much  rather  would  I  have  him  slay 
his  neighbor,  than  cheat  him. 

loi.  But  remember,  so  far  as  this  may  be  true, 
the  game  of  war  is  only  that  in  which  the  full  per- 
sonal power  of  the  human  creature  is  brought  out  in 
management  of  its  weapons.  And  this  for  three 
reasons : — 

First,  the  great  justification  of  this  game  is  that  it 
truly  when  well  played,  determines  who  is  the  best 
man  ;  —  who  is  the  highest  bred,  the  most  self-deny- 
ing, the  most  fearless,  the  coolest  of  nerve,  the  swift- 
«st  of  eye  and  hand.     You  cannot  test  these  qualities 


fVAR.  105 

wholly,  unless  there  is  a  clear  possibility  of  the  strug- 
gle's ending  in  death.  It  is  only  in  the  fronting  of 
that  condition  that  the  full  trial  of  the  man,  soul  and 
body,  comes  out.  You  may  go  to  your  game  of 
wickets,  or  of  hurdles,  or  of  cards,  and  any  knavery 
that  is  in  you  may  stay  unchallenged  all  the  while. 
But  if  the  play  may  be  ended  at  any  moment  by  a 
lance-thrust,  a  man  will  probably  make  up  his  ac- 
counts a  little  before  he  enters  it.  Whatever  is  rot- 
ten and  evil  in  him  will  weaken  his  hand  more  in 
holding  a  sword-hilt,  than  in  balancing  a  billiard-cue  ; 
and  on  the  whole,  the  habit  of  living  Hghtly  hearted, 
in  daily  presence  of  death,  always  has  had,  and 
must  have,  power  both  in  the  making  and  testing  of 
honest  men.  But  for  the  final  testing,  observe,  you 
must  make  the  issue  of  battle  strictly  dependent  on 
fineness  of  frame,  and  firmness  of  hand.  You  must 
not  make  it  the  question,  which  of  the  combatants 
has  the  longest  gun,  or  which  has  got  behind  the 
biggest  tree,  or  which  has  the  wind  in  his  face,  or 
which  has  gunpowder  made  by  the  best  chemists,  or 
iron  smelted  with  the  best  coal,  or  the  angriest  rtiob 
at  his  back.  Decide  your  battle,  whether  of  nations, 
or  individuals,  on  i/tose  terms; — and  you  have  only 
multiplied  confusion,  and  added  slaughter  to  iniquity. 
But  decide  your  battle  by  pure  trial  which  has  the 
strongest  arm,  and  steadiest  heart,  —  and  you  have 
gone  far  to  decide  a  great  many  matters  besides,  and 
to  decide  them  rightly.* 

102.   And   the   other   reasons    for   this    mode   of 
decision  of  cause,  are  the   diminution  both  of  the 

*  Compare  Fors  Clavigera,  Letter  XIV.  p.  9. 


io6        THE   CROWJV  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

material  destructiveness,  or  cost,  and  of  the  physica\ 
distress  of  war.  For  you  must  not  think  that  in 
speaking  to  you  in  this  (as  you  may  imagine),  fantas- 
tic praise  of  battle,  I  have  overlooked  the  conditions 
weighing  against  me.  I  pray  all  of  you,  who  have  not 
read,  to  read  with  the  most  earnest  attention,  Mr. 
Helps's  two  essays  on  War  and  Government,  in  the 
first  volume  of  the  last  series  of  "  Friends  in  Council." 
Everything  that  can  be  urged  against  war  is  there 
simply,  exhaustively,  and  most  graphically  stated. 
And  all,  there  urged,  is  true.  But  the  two  great  counts 
of  evil  alleged  against  war  by  that  most  thoughtful 
writer,  hold  only  against  modern  war.  If  you  have 
to  take  away  masses  of  men  from  all  industrial  em- 
ployment, —  to  feed  them  by  the  labor  of  others,  — 
to  provide  them  with  destructive  machines,  varied 
daily  in  national  rivalship  of  inventive  cost ;  if  you 
have  to  ravage  the  country  which  you  attack,  — 
to  destroy  for  a  score  of  future  years,  its  roads,  its 
woods,  its  cities,  and  its  harbors;  —  and  if,  finally, 
having  brought  masses  of  men,  counted  by  hundreds 
of  thousands,  face  to  face,  you  tear  those  masses  to 
pieces  with  jagged  shot,  and  leave  the  living  crea- 
tures, countlessly  beyond  all  help  of  surgery,  to 
starve  and  parch,  through  days  of  torture,  down  into 
clots  of  clay  —  what  book  of  accounts  shall  record 
the  cost  of  your  work ;  —  what  book  of  judgment 
sentence  the  guilt  of  it  ? 

103.  That,  I  say,  is  modern  war,  —  scientific  war, 
—  chemical  and  mechanic  war,  —  how  much  worse 
than  the  savage's  poisoned  arrow  !  And  yet  you  will 
tell  me,  perhaps,  that  any  other  war  than  this  is  im- 


IVAR.  107 

possible  now.  It  may  be  so  ;  the  progress  of  science 
cannot,  perhaps,  be  otherwise  registered  than  by  new 
facilities  of  destruction  ;  and  the  brotherly  love  of  our 
enlarging  Christianity  be  only  proved  by  multiplica- 
tion of  murder.  Yet  hea",  for  a  moment,  what  war 
was,  in  Pagan  and  ignorant  days  ;  —  what  war  might 
yet  be,  if  we  could  extinguish  our  science  in  darkness, 
and  join  the  heathen's  practice  to  the  Christian's 
theory.  I  read  you  this  from  a  book  which  probably 
most  of  you  know  well,  and  all  ought  to  know  —  Miil- 
ler's  "  Dorians  ;  "  *  —  but  I  have  put  the  points  I  wish 
you  to  remember  in  closer  connection  than  in  his 
text. 

104.  "The  chief  characteristic  of  the  warriors  of 
Sparta  was  great  composure  and  subdued  strength  ; , 
the  violence  (Kvaaa)  of  Aristodemus  and  Isadas  being 
considered  as  deserving  rather  of  blame  than  praise ; 
and  these  qualities  in  general  distinguished  the  Greeks 
from  the  northern  Barbarians,  whose  boldness  always 
consisted  in  noise  and  tumult.  For  the  same  reason 
the  Spartans  sacrificed  to  the  Muses  before  an  action ; 
these  goddesses  being  expected  to  produce  regularity 
and  order  in  battle ;  as  they  sacrificed  on  the  same 
occasion  in  Crete  to  the  god  of  love,  as  the  confirmer 
of  mutual  esteem  and  shame.  Every  man  put  on  a 
crown,  when  the  band  of  flute-players  gave  the  signal 
for  attack ;  all  the  shields  of  the  line  glittered  with 
their  high  polish,  and  mingled  their  splendor  with 
the  dark  red  of  the  purple  mantles,  which  were  meant 
both  to  adorn  the  combatant,  and  to  conceal  the 
blood  of  the  wounded ;  to  fall  well  and  decorously 

*  Vol.  ii.,  chap.  12,  §  9. 


lo8        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

being  an  incentive  the  more  to  the  most  heroic  valor. 
The  conduct  of  the  Spartans  in  battle  denotes  a  high 
and  noble  disposition,  which  rejected  all  the  extremes 
of  brutal  rage.  The  pursuit  of  the  enemy  ceased 
when  the  victory  was  completed  ;  and  after  the  signal 
for  retreat  had  been  given,  all  hostilities  ceased.  The 
spoiling  of  arms,  at  least  during  the  battle,  was  also 
interdicted ;  and  the  consecration  of  the  spoils  of 
slain  enemies  to  the  gods,  as,  in  general,  all  rejoi- 
cings for  victory,  were  considered  as  ill-omened." 

105.  Such  was  the  war  of  the  greatest  soldiers 
who  prayed  to  heathen  gods.  What  Christian  war  is, 
preached  by  Christian  ministers,  let  any  one  tell  you, 
who  saw  the  sacred  crowning,  and  heard  the  sacred 
flute-playing,  and  was  inspired  and  sanctified  by  the 
divinely-measured  and  musical  language,  of  any  North 
American  regiment  preparing  for  its  charge.  And 
what  is  the  relative  cost  of  life  in  pagan  and  Christian 
wars,  let  this  one  fact  tell  you :  —  the  Spartans  won 
the  decisive  battle  of  Corinth  with  the  loss  of  eight 
men  ;  the  victors  at  indecisive  Gettysburg  confess  to 
the  loss  of  30,000. 

106.  II.  I  pass  now  to  our  second  order  of  war, 
the  commonest  among  men,  that  undertaken  in  desire 
of  dominion.  And  let  me  ask  you  to  think  for  a  few 
moments  what  the  real  meaning  of  this  desire  of 
dominion  is  —  first  in  the  minds  of  kings  —  then  in 
that  of  nations. 

Now,  mind  you  this  first, —  that  I  speak  either 
about  kings,  or  masses  of  men,  with  a  fixed  conviction 
that  human  nature  is  a  noble  and  beautiful  thing ;  not 
a  foul  nor  a  base  thing.     All  the  sin  of  men  I  esteem 


tVA/?.  109 

as  their  disease,  not  their  nature ;  as  a  folly  which 
may  be  prevented,  not  a  necessity  which  must  be 
accepted.  And  my  wonder,  even  when  things  are  at 
their  worst,  is  always  at  the  height  which  this  human 
nature  can  attain.  Thinking  it  high,  I  find  it  always 
a  higher  thing  than  I  thought  it ;  while  those  who 
think  it  low,  find  it,  and  will  find  it,  always  lower  than 
they  thought  it :  the  fact  being,  that  it  is  infinite, 
and  capable  of  infinite  height  and  infinite  fall ;  but  the 
nature  of  it  —  and  here  is  the  faith  which  I  would 
have  you  hold  with  me  —  the  nature  of  it  is  in  the 
nobleness,  not  in  the  catastrophe. 

107.  Take  the  faith  in  its  utmost  terms.  When 
the  captain  of  the  ' '  London  "  shook  hands  with  his 
mate,  saying  "God  speed  you!  I  will  go  down  with 
my  passengers,"  that  I  believe  to  be  "  human  nature." 
He  does  not  do  it  from  any  religious  motive  —  from 
any  hope  of  reward,  or  any  fear  of  punishment ;  he  does 
it  because  he  is  a  man.  But  when  a  mother,  living 
among  the  fair  fields  of  merry  England,  gives  her  two- 
year-old  child  to  be  suffocated  under  a  mattress  in  her 
inner  room,  while  the  said  mother  waits  and  talks  out- 
side ;  that  I  believe  to  be  not  human  nature.  You  have 
the  two  extremes  there,  shortly.  And  you,  men,  and 
mothers,  who  are  here  face  to  face  with  me  to-night, 
I  call  upon  you  to  say  which  of  these  is  human,  and 
which  inhuman  —  which  "  natural  "and  which  "  unnat- 
ural "  ?  Choose  your  creed  at  once,  I  beseech  you  :  — 
choose  it  with  unshaken  choice  —  choose  it  forever. 
Will  you  take,  for  foundation  of  act  and  hope,  the 
faith  that  this  man  was  such  as  God  made  him,  01 
that  this  woman  was  such  as  God  made  her  ?    Which 


no        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD    OLIVE. 

of  them  has  feiled  from  their  nature  —  from  their 
present,  possible,  actual  nature  ;  —  not  their  nature  of 
long  ago,  but  their  nature  of  now  ?  Which  has  be- 
trayed it — falsified  it?  Did  the  guardian  who  died 
in  his  trust,  die  inhumanly,  and  as  a  fool ;  and  did  the 
murderess  of  her  child  fulfil  the  law  of  her  being? 
Choose,  I  say ;  infinitude  of  choices  hang  upon  this. 
You  have  had  false  prophets  among  you  —  for  cen- 
turies you  have  had  them  —  solemnly  warned  against 
them  though  you  were ;  false  prophets,  who  have  told 
you  that  all  men  are  nothing  but  fiends  or  wolves,  half 
beast,  half  devil.  Believe  that,  and  indeed  you  may 
sink  to  that.  But  refuse  that,  and  have  faith  that  God 
"made  you  upright,"  though  you  have  sought  out 
many  inventions ;  so,  you  will  strive  daily  to  become 
more  what  your  Maker  meant  and  means  you  to  be, 
and  daily  gives  you  also  the  power  to  be  —  and  you 
will  cling  more  and  more  to  the  nobleness  and  virtue 
that  is  in  you,  saying,  "  My  righteousness  I  hold  fast, 
and  will  not  let  it  go." 

io8.  I  have  put  this  to  you  as  a  choice,  as  if  you 
might  hold  either  of  these  creeds  you  liked  best.  But 
there  is  in  reality  no  choice  for  you ;  the  facts  being 
quite  easily  ascertainable.  You  have  no  business  to 
think  about  this  matter,  or  to  choose  in  it.  The  broad 
fact  is,  that  a  human  creature  of  the  highest  race, 
and  most  perfect  as  a  human  thing,  is  invariably  both 
kind  and  true ;  and  that  as  you  lower  the  race,  you 
get  cruelty  and  falseness,  as  you  get  deformity :  and 
this  so  steadily  and  assuredly,  that  the  two  great 
words  which,  in  their  first  use,  meant  only  perfection 
of  race,  have  come,  by  consequence  of  the  invariable 


IVA/d.  Ill 

connection  of  virtue  with  the  fine  human  nature,  both 
to  signify  benevolence  of  disposition.  The  word 
generous,  and  the  word  gentle,  both,  in  their  origin, 
meant  only  "  of  pure  race,"  but  because  charity  and 
tenderness  are  inseparable  from  this  purity  of  blood, 
the  words  which  once  stood  only  for  pride,  now  stand 
as  synonyms  for  virtue. 

109.  Now,  this  being  the  true  power  of  our  inher- 
ent humanity,  and  seeing  that  all  the  aim  of  education 
should  be  to  develop  this ;  —  and  seeing  also  what 
magnificent  self-sacrifice  the  higher  classes  of  men 
are  capable  of,  for  any  cause  that  they  understand  or 
feel,  —  it  is  wholly  inconceivable  to  me  how  well-edu- 
cated princes,  who  ought  to  be  of  all  gentlemen  the 
gentlest,  and  of  all  nobles  the  most  generous,  and 
whose  title  of  royalty  means  only  their  function  of 
doing  every  man  '■'■  righV  —  how  these,  I  say,  through- 
out history,  should  so  rarely  pronounce  themselves 
on  the  side  of  the  poor  and  of  justice,  but  continually 
maintain  themselves  and  their  own  interests  by  op- 
pression of  the  poor,  and  by  wresting  of  justice  ;  and 
how  this  should  be  accepted  as  so  natural,  that  the 
word  loyalty,  which  means  faithfulness  to  law,  is  used 
as  if  it  were  only  the  duty  of  a  people  to  be  loyal  to 
their  king,  and  not  the  duty  of  a  king  to  be  infin- 
itely more  loyal  to  his  people.  How  comes  it  to 
pass  that  a  captain  will  die  with  his  passengers,  and 
lean  over  the  gunwale  to  give  the  parting  boat  its 
course ;  but  that  a  king  will  not  usually  die  with, 
much  less/'tfr,  his  passengers,  — thinks  it  rather  in- 
cumbent on  his  passengers  in  any  number,  to  die  for 
him  f 


112        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD    OLIVE. 

no.  Think,  I  beseech  you,  of  the  wonder  of  this. 
The  sea  captain,  not  captain  by  divine  right,  but  only 
by  company's  appointment;  —  not  a  man  of  royal 
descent,  but  only  a  plebeian  who  can  steer ;  —  not 
with  the  eyes  of  the  world  upon  him,  but  with  feeble 
chance,  depending  on  one  poor  boat,  of  his  name 
being  ever  heard  above  the  wash  of  the  fatal  waves  ;  — 
not  with  the  cause  of  a  nation  resting  on  his  act,  but 
helpless  to  save  so  much  as  a  child  from  among  the 
lost  crowd  with  whom  he  resolves  to  be  lost,  —  yet 
goes  down  quietly  to  his  grave,  rather  than  break  his 
faith  to  these  few  emigrants.  But  your  captain  by 
divine  right,  —  your  captain  with  the  hues  of  a  hun- 
dred shields  of  kings  upon  his  breast,  —  your  captain 
whose  every  deed,  brave  or  base,  will  be  illuminated 
or  branded  forever  before  unescapable  eyes  of  men,  — 
your  captain  whose  every  thought  and  act  are  benefi- 
cent, or  fatal,  from  sunrising  to  setting,  blessing  as 
the  sunshine,  or  shadowing  as  the  night,  —  this  cap- 
tain, as  you  find  him  in  history,  for  the  most  part 
thinks  only  how  he  may  tax  his  passengers,  and  sit 
at  most  ease  in  his  state  cabin ! 

III.  For  observe,  if  there  had  been  indeed  in  the 
hearts  of  the  rulers  of  great  multitudes  of  men  any 
such  conception  of  work  for  the  good  of  those  under 
their  command,  as  there  is  in  the  good  and  thoughtful 
masters  of  any  small  company  of  men,  not  only  wars 
for  the  sake  of  mere  increase  of  power  could  never 
take  place,  b'lt  our  idea  of  power  itself  would  be  en- 
tirely altered.  Do  you  suppose  that  to  think  and  act 
even  for  a  million  of  men,  to  hear  their  complaints, 
watch  their  weaknesses,  restrain  their  vices,  make 


IVAJ?.  113 

laws  for  them,  lead  them,  day  by  day,  to  purer  life, 
is  not  enough  for  one  man's  work  ?  If  any  of  us 
were  absolute  lord  only  of  a  district  of  a  hundred 
miles  square,  and  were  resolved  on  doing  our  utmost 
for  it ;  making  it  feed  as  large  a  number  of  people  as 
possible ;  making  every  clod  productive,  and  every 
rock  defensive,  and  every  human  being  happy ;  should 
we  not  have  enough  on  our  hands  think  you  ? 

112.  But  if  the  ruler  has  any  other  aim  than  this; 
if,  careless  of  the  result  of  his  interference,  he  desire 
only  the  authority  to  interfere  ;  and,  regardless  of  what 
is  ill-done  or  well-done,  cares  only  that  it  shall  be  done 
at  his  bidding ;  —  if  he  would  rather  do  two  hundred 
miles'  space  of  mischief,  than  one  hundred  miles' 
space  of  good,  of  course  he  will  try  to  add  to  his  ter- 
ritory ;  and  to  add  inimitably.  But  does  he  add  to 
his  power  ?  Do  you  call  it  power  in  a  child,  if  he  is 
allowed  to  play  with  the  wheels  and  bands  of  some 
vast  engine,  pleased  with  their  murmur  and  whirl,  till 
his  unwise  touch,  wandering  where  it  ought  not,  scat- 
ters beam  and  wheel  into  ruin  ?  Yet  what  machine 
is  so  vast,  so  incognizable,  as  the  working  of  the 
mind  of  a  nation ;  what  child's  touch  so  wanton,  as 
the  word  of  a  selfish  king  ?  And  yet,  how  long  have 
we  allowed  the  historian  to  speak  of  the  extent  of  the 
calamity  a  man  causes,  as  a  just  ground  for  his  pride  ; 
and  to  extol  him  as  the  greatest  prince,  who  is  only 
the  centre  of  the  widest  error.  Follow  out  this 
thought  by  yourselves ;  and  you  will  find  that  all 
power,  properly  so  called,  is  wise  and  benevolent. 
There  may  be  capacity  in  a  drifting  fire-ship  to  de- 
stroy a  fleet ;  there  may  be  venom  enough  in  a  dead 


114        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

body  to  infect  a  nation: — but  which  of  you,  the 
most  ambitious,  would  desire  a  drifting  Icinghood, 
robed  in  consuming  fire,  or  a  poison-dipped  sceptre 
whose  touch  was  mortal  ?  There  is  no  true  potency, 
remember,  but  that  of  help ;  nor  true  ambition,  but 
ambition  to  save. 

113.  And  then,  observe  farther,  this  true  power, 
the  power  of  saving,  depends  neither  on  multitude  of 
men,  nor  on  extent  of  territory.  We  are  continually 
assuming  that  nations  become  strong  according  to 
their  numbers.  They  indeed  become  so,  if  those 
numbers  can  be  made  of  one  mind ;  but  how  are  you 
sure  you  can  stay  them  in  one  mind,  and  keep  them 
from  having  north  and  south  minds  ?  Grant  them 
unanimous,  how  know  you  they  will  be  unanimous  in 
right  ?  If  they  are  unanimous  in  wrong,  the  more 
they  are,  essentially  the  weaker  they  are.  Or,  sup- 
pose that  they  can  neither  be  of  one  mind,  nor  of  two 
minds,  but  can  only  be  of  no  mind  ?  Suppose  they 
are  a  mere  helpless  mob ;  tottering  into  precipitant 
catastrophe,  like  a  waggon-load  of  stones  when  the 
wheel  comes  off.  Dangerous  enough  for  their  neigh- 
bors, certainly,  but  not  "  powerful." 

114.  Neither  does  strength  depend  on  extent  of 
territory,  any  more  than  upon  number  of  population. 
Take  up  your  maps  when  you  go  home  this  evening, 
—  put  the  cluster  of  British  Isles  beside  the  mass  of 
South  America ;  and  then  consider  whether  any  race 
of  men  need  care  how  much  ground  they  stand  upon. 
The  strength  is  in  the  men,  and  in  their  unity  anc 
virtue,  not  in  their  standing  room :  a  little  group  of 
wise  hearts  is  better  than  a  wilderness  full  of  fools ; 


?VA/?.  115 

and  only  that  nation  gains  true  territory,  which  gains 
itself. 

115.  And  now  for  the  brief  practical  outcome  of 
all  this.  Remember,  no  government  is  ultimately 
strong,  but  in  proportion  to  its  kindness  and  justice ; 
and  that  a  nation  does  not  strengthen,  by  merely  mul- 
tiplying and  diffusing  itself.  We  have  not  strength- 
ened as  yet,  by  multiplying  into  America.  Nay,  even 
when  it  has  not  to  encounter  the  separating  condi- 
tions of  emigration,  a  nation  need  not  boast  itself  of 
multiplying  on  its  own  ground,  if  it  multiplies  only  as 
flies  or  locusts  do,  with  the  god  of  flies  for  its  god. 
It  multiplies  its  strength  only  by  increasing  as  one 
great  family,  in  perfect  fellowship  and  brotherhood. 
And  lastly,  it  does  not  strengthen  itself  by  seizing 
dominion  over  races  whom  it  cannot  benefit.  Austria 
is  not  strengthened,  but  weakened,  by  her  grasp 
of  Lombardy ;  and  whatever  apparent  increase  of 
majesty  and  of  wealth  may  have  accrued  to  us  from 
the  possession  of  India,  whether  these  prove  to  us 
ultimately  power  or  weakness,  depends  wholly  on  the 
degree  in  which  our  influence  on  the  native  race  shall 
be  benevolent  and  exalting. 

116.  But,  as  it  is  at  their  own  peril  that  any  race 
extends  their  dominion  in  mere  desire  of  power,  so  it 
is  at  their  own  still  greater  peril  that  they  refuse  to 
undertake  aggressive  war,  according  to  their  force, 
whenever  they  are  assured  that  their  authority  would 
be  helpful  and  protective.  Nor  need  you  listen  to 
any  sophistical  objection  of  the  impossibility  of  know- 
ing when  a  people's  help  is  needed,  or  when  not. 
Make  your  national  conscience  clean,  and  your  nationa. 


Il6         THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

eyes  will  soon  be  clear.  No  man  who  is  truly  ready 
to  take  part  in  a  noble  quarrel  will  ever  stand  long  in 
doubt  by  whom,  or  in  what  cause,  his  aid  is  needed. 
1  hold  it  my  duty  to  make  no  political  statement  of 
any  special  bearing  in  this  presence ;  but  I  tell  you 
broadly  and  boldly,  that,  within  these  last  ten  years, 
we  English  have,  as  a  knightly  nation,  lost  our  spurs  : 
we  have  fought  where  we  should  not  have  fought,  for 
gain ;  and  we  have  been  passive  where  we  should  not 
have  been  passive,  for  fear.  I  tell  you  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  non-intervention,  as  now  preached  among  us, 
is  as  selfish  and  cruel  as  the  worst  frenzy  of  conquest, 
and  differs  from  it  only  by  being  not  only  malignant, 
but  dastardly. 

117.  I  know,  however,  that  my  opinions  on  this 
subject  differ  too  widely  from  those  ordinarily  held, 
to  be  any  farther  intruded  upon  you ;  and  therefore  I 
pass  lastly  to  examine  the  conditions  of  the  third 
kind  of  noble  war ; —  war  waged  simply  for  defence 
of  the  country  in  which  we  were  born,  and  for  the 
maintenance  and  execution  of  her  laws,  by  whomso- 
ever threatened  or  defied.  It  is  to  this  duty  that  I 
suppose  most  men  entering  the  army  consider  them- 
selves in  reality  to  be  bound,  and  I  want  you  now  to 
reflect  what  the  laws  of  mere  defence  are  ;  and  what 
the  soldier's  duty,  as  now  understood,  or  supposed  to 
be  understood.  You  have  solemnly  devoted  your- 
selves to  be  English  soldiers,  for  the  guardianship 
of  England.  I  want  you  to  feel  what  this  vow  of 
yours  indeed  means,  or  is  gradually  coming  to 
mean. 

118.  You  take  it  upon  you,  first,  while  you  are 


sentimental  schoolboys ;  you  go  into  your  military 
convent,  or  barracks,  just  as  a  girl  goes  into  her 
convent  while  she  is  a  sentimental  schoolgirl ;  neither 
of  you  then  know  what  you  are  about,  though 
both  the  good  soldiers  and  the  good  nuns  make  the 
best  of  it  afterwards.  You  don't  understand  perhaps 
why  I  call  you  "sentimental"  schoolboys,  when  you 
go  into  the  army?  Because,  on  the  whole,  it  is  love 
of  adventure,  of  excitement,  of  fine  dress  and  of  the 
pride  of  fame,  all  which  are  sentimental  motives, 
which  chiefly  make  a  boy  like  going  into  the  Guards 
better  than  into  a  counting-house.  You  fancy,  per- 
haps, that  there  is  a  severe  sense  of  duty  mixed  with 
these  peacocky  motives?  And  in  the  best  of  you, 
there  is ;  but  do  not  think  that  it  is  principal.  If  you 
cared  to  do  your  duty  to  your  country  in  a  prosaic  and 
unsentimental  way,  depend  upon  it,  there  is  now 
truer  duty  to  be  done  in  raising  harvests,  than  in  burn- 
ing them ;  more  in  building  houses,  than  in  shelling 
them  —  more  in  winning  money  by  your  own  work, 
wherewith  to  help  men,  than  in  taxing  other  people's 
vyork,  for  money  wherewith  to  slay  men ;  more  duty 
finally,  in  honest  and  unselfish  living  than  in  honest 
and  unselfish  dying,  though  that  seems  to  your  boys' 
eyes  the  bravest.  So  far  then,  as  for  your  own  honor, 
and  the  honor  of  your  families,  you  choose  brave  death 
in  a  red  coat  before  brave  life  in  a  black  one,  you  are 
sentimental ;  and  now  see  what  this  passionate  vow  of 
yours  comes  to.  For  a  little  while  you  ride,  and  you 
hunt  tigers  or  savages,  you  shoot,  and  are  shot ;  you 
are  happy,  and  proud,  always,  and  honored  and  wept 
if  you  die  ;  and  you  are  satisfied  with  your  life,  and 


Il8         THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

with  the  end  of  it ;  beUeving,  on  the  whole,  that  good 
rather,  than  harm  of  it  comes  to  others,  and  much 
pleasure  to  you. 

119.  But  as  the  sense  of  duty  enters  into  your 
forming  minds,  the  vow  takes  another  aspect.  You 
find  that  you  have  put  yourselves  into  the  hand  of 
your  country  as  a  weapon.  You  have  vowed  to 
strike,  when  she  bids  you,  and  to  stay  scabbarded 
when  she  bids  you ;  all  that  you  need  answer  for  is, 
that  you  fail  not  in  her  grasp.  And  there  is  goodness 
in  this,  and  greatness,  if  you  can  trust  the  hand  and 
heart  of  the  Britomart  who  has  braced  you  to  her  side, 
and  are  assured  that  when  she  leaves  you  sheathed  in 
darkness,  there  is  no  need  for  your  flash  to  the  sun. 
But  remember,  good  and  noble  as  this  state  may  be, 
it  is  a  state  of  slavery.  There  are  different  kinds  of 
slaves  and  different  masters .  Some  slaves  are  scourged 
to  their  work  by  whips,  others  are  scourged  to  it  by 
restlessness  or  ambition.  It  does  not  matter  what  the 
whip  is ;  it  is  none  the  less  a  whip,  because  you  have 
cut  thongs  for  it  out  of  your  own  souls  :  the  fact,  so  far, 
of  slavery,  is  in  being  driven  to  your  work  without 
thought,  at  another's  bidding.  Again,  some  slaves 
are  bought  with  money,  and  others  with  praise.  It 
matters  not  what  the  purchase-money  is.  The  distin- 
guishing sign  of  slavery  is  to  have  a  price,  and  be 
bought  for  it.  Again,  it  matters  not  what  kind  of 
work  you  are  set  on ;  some  slaves  are  set  to  forced 
diggings,  others  to  forced  marches  ;  some  dig  furrows, 
others  field-works,  and  others  graves.  Some  press 
the  juice  of  reeds,  and  some  the  juice  of  vines,  and 
some  the  blood  of  men.    The  fact  of  the  captivity  is 


WAR.  iig 

the  same  whatever  work  we  are  set  upon,  though  the 
fruits  of  the  toil  may  be  diiTerent. 

1 20.  But,  remember,  in  thus  vowing  ourselves  to 
be  the  slaves  of  any  master,  it  ought  to  be  some  sub- 
ject of  forethought  with  us,  what  work  he  is  likely  to 
put  us  upon.  You  may  think  that  the  whole  duty  of 
a  soldier  is  to  be  passive,  that  it  is  the  country  you 
have  left  behind  who  is  to  command,  and  you  have 
only  to  obey.  But  are  you  sure  that  you  have  left 
all  your  country  behind,  or  that  the  part  of  it  you 
have  so  left  is  indeed  the  best  part  of  it?  Suppose 
—  and,  remember,  it  is  quite  conceivable  —  that  you 
yourselves  are  indeed  the  best  part  of  England ;  that 
you,  who  have  become  the  slaves,  ought  to  have  been 
the  masters ;  and  that  those  who  are  the  masters, 
ought  to  have  been  the  slaves !  If  it  is  a  noble 
and  whole-hearted  England,  whose  bidding  you  are 
bound  to  do,  it  is  well ;  but  if  you  are  yourselves 
the  best  of  her  heart,  and  the  England  you  have 
left  be  but  a  half-hearted  England,  how  say  you  of 
your  obedience  ?  You  were  too  proud  to  become  shopH 
keepers  :  are  you  satisfied  then  to  become  the  servants 
of  shop-keepers?  You  were  too  proud  to  become 
merchants  or  farmers  yourselves  :  will  you  have  mer- 
chants or  farmers  then  for  your  field  marshals  ?  You 
had  no  gifts  of  special  grace  for  Exeter  Hall :  will  you 
have  some  gifted  person  thereat  for  your  commander- 
in-chief,  to  judge  of  your  work,  and  reward  it?  You 
imagine  yourselves  to  be  the  army  of  England :  how 
if  you  should  find  yourselves,  at  last,  only  the  police 
of  her  manufacturing  towns,  and  the  beadles  of  her 
little  Bethels? 


I20         THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

121.  It  is  not  so  yet,  nor  will  be  so,  I  trust,  for- 
ever ;  but  what  I  want  you  to  see,  and  to  be  assured 
of,  is,  that  the  ideal  of  soldiership  is  not  mere  passive 
obedience  and  bravery;  that,  so  far  from  this,  no 
country  is  in  a  healthy  state  which  has  separated,  even 
in  a  small  degree,  her  civil  from  her  military  power. 
All  states  of  the  world,  however  great,  fall  at  once 
when  they  use  mercenary  armies  ;  and  although  it  is 
a  less  instant  form  of  error  (because  involving  no 
national  taint  of  cowardice) ,  it  is  yet  an  error  no  less 
ultimately  fatal  —  it  is  the  error  especially  of  modern 
times,  of  which  we  cannot  yet  know  all  the  calamitous 
consequences  —  to  take  away  the  best  blood  and 
strength  of  the  nation,  all  the  soul-substance  of  it 
that  is  brave,  and  careless  of  reward,  and  scornful  of 
pain,  and  faithful  in  trust ;  and  to  cast  that  into  steel, 
and  make  a  mere  sword  of  it ;  taking  away  its  voice 
and  will ;  but  to  keep  the  worst  part  of  the  nation  — 
whatever  is  cowardly,  avaricious,  sensual,  and  faith- 
less—  and  to  give  to  this  the  voice,  to  this  the  au- 
thority, to  this  the  chief  privilege,  where  there  is 
least  capacity,  of  thought. 

122.  The  fulfilment  of  your  vow  for  the  defence 
of  England  will  by  no  means  consist  in  carrying  out 
such  a  system.  You  are  not  true  soldiers,  if  you 
only  mean  to  stand  at  a  shop  door,  to  protect  shop- 
boys  who  are  cheating  inside.  A  soldier's  vow  to  his 
country  is  that  he  will  die  for  the  guardianship  of 
her  domestic  virtue,  of  her  righteous  laws,  and  of 
her  anyway  challenged  or  endangered  honor.  A 
state  without  virtue,  without  laws,  and  without 
honor,  he  is   bound  not  to  defend;    nay,  bound  to 


WAR.  121 

redress  by  his  own  right  hand  that  which  he  sees 
to  be  base  in  her. 

123.  So  sternly  is  this  the  law  of  Nature  and 
life,  that  a  nation  once  utterly  corrupt  can  only  be 
redeemed  by  a  military  despotism  —  never  by  talk- 
ing, nor  by  its  free  effort.  And  the  health  of  any 
state  consists  simply  in  this :  that  in  it,  those  who 
are  wisest  shall  also  be  strongest ;  its  nilers  should 
be  also  its  soldiers ;  or,  rather,  by  force  of  intellect 
more  than  of  sword,  its  soldiers  also  its  rulers. 
Whatever  the  hold  which  the  aristocracy  of  England 
has  on  the  heart  of  England,  in  that  they  are  still 
always  m  front  of  her  battles,  this  hold  will  not  be 
enough,  unless  they  are  also  in  front  of  her  thoughts. 
And  truly  her  thoughts  need  good  captain's  leading 
now,  if  ever !  Do  you  know  what,  by  this  beautiful 
division  of  labor  (her  brave  men  fighting,  and  her 
cowards  thinking) ,  she  has  come  at  last  to  think  ? 
Here  is  a  bit  of  paper  in  my  hand,*  a  good  one 
too,  and  an  honest  one ;  quite  representative  of 
the  best  common  public  thought  of  England  at  this 

*  I  do  not  care  to  refer  to  the  journal  quoted,  because  the  article 
was  unworthy  of  its  general  tone,  though  in  order  to  enable  the  audi- 
ence to  verify  the  quoted  sentence,  I  left  the  number  containing  it  on 
the  table,  when  I  gave  this  lecture.  But  a  saying  of  Baron  Liebig's, 
quoted  at  the  head  of  a  leader  on  the  same  subject  in  the  Daily 
Telegraph  of  January  11,  1866,  summarily  digests  and  presents  the 
maximum  folly  of  modem  thought  in  this  respect.  "  Civilization,"  says 
the  Baron,  "is  the  economy  of  power,  and  English  power  is  coal." 
Not  altogether  so,  my  chemical  friend.  Civilization  is  the  making  of 
civil  persons,  which  is  a  kind  of  distillation  of  which  alembics  are  in- 
capable, and  does  not  at  all  imply  the  turning  of  a  amall  company  of 
gentlemen  into  a  large  company  of  ironmongers.  And  English  power 
'what  little  of  it  may  be  left)  is  by  no  means  coal,  but,  indeed,  of  that 
which,  "  when  the  whole  world  turns  to  coal,  then  chiefly  lives." 


122         THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

moment ;  and  it  is  holding  forth  in  one  of  its  leaders 
upon  our  "  social  welfare,"  —  upon  our  "vivid  life" 
—  upon  the  "  political  supremacy  of  Great  Britain." 
And  what  do  you  think  all  these  are  owing  to  ?  To 
what  our  English  sires  have  done  for  us,  and  taught 
us,  age  after  age  ?  No :  not  to  that.  To  our  honesty 
of  heart,  or  coolness  of  head,  or  steadiness  of  will  ? 
No :  not  to  these.  To  our  thinkers,  or  our  states- 
men, or  our  poets,  or  our  captains,  or  our  martyrs,  or 
the  patient  labor  of  our  poor  ?  No :  not  to  these  ; 
or  at  least  not  to  these  in  any  chief  measure.  Nay, 
says  the  journal,  "  more  than  any  agency,  it  is  the 
cheapness  and  abundance  of  our  coal  which  have 
made  us  what  we  are."  If  it  be  so,  then  "  ashes  to 
ashes  "  be  our  epitaph  !  and  the  sooner  the  better. 

§  124.  Gentlemen  of  England,  if  ever  you  would 
have  your  country  breathe  the  pure  breath  of  heaven 
again,  and  receive  again  a  soul  into  her  body,  instead 
of  rotting  into  a  carcase,  blown  up  in  the  belly  with 
carbonic  acid  (and  great  that  way),  you  must  think, 
and  feel,  for  your  England,  as  well  as  fight  for  her: 
you  must  teach  her  that  all  the  true  greatness  she  ever 
had,  or  ever  can  have,  she  won  while  her  fields  were 
green  and  her  faces  ruddy ;  —  that  greatness  is  still 
possible  for  Englishmen,  even  though  the  ground  be 
not  hollow  under  their  feet,  nor  the  sky  black  over 
their  heads. 

And  bear  with  me  you  soldier  youths,  who  are 
thus  in  all  ways  the  hope  of  your  country ;  or  must 
be,  if  she  have  any  hope :  if  I  urge  you  with  rude 
earnestness  to  remember  that  your  fitness  for  all 
^ture  trust  depends  upon  what  you  are  now.     No 


WAR.  123 

good  soldier  in  his  old  age  was  ever  careless  ot 
indolent  in  his  youth.  Many  a  giddy  and  thought- 
less boy  has  become  a  good  bishop,  or  a  good  lawyer, 
or  a  good  merchant ;  but  no  such  an  one  ever  became 
a  good  general.  I  challenge  you,  in  all  history,  to 
find  a  record  of  a  good  soldier  who  was  not  grave 
and  earnest  in  his  youth.  And,  in  general,  I  have 
no  patience  with  people  who  talk  about  "  the  thought- 
lessness of  youth"  indulgently.  I  had  infinitely 
rather  hear  of  thoughtless  old  age,  and  the  indul- 
gence due  to  that.  When  a  man  has  done  his  work, 
and  nothing  can  any  way  be  materially  altered  in  his 
fate,  let  him  forget  his  toil,  and  jest  with  his  fate,  if 
he  will ;  but  what  excuse  can  you  find  for  wilfulness 
of  thought,  at  the  very  time  when  every  crisis  of 
future  fortune  hangs  on  your  decisions  ?  A  youth 
thoughtless !  when  all  the  happiness  of  his  home  for- 
ever depends  on  the  chances,  or  the  passions,  of  an 
hour !  A  youth  thoughtless  !  when  the  career  of  all 
his  days  depends  on  the  opportunity  of  a  moment ! 
A  youth  thoughtless  !  when  his  every  act  is  as  a  torch 
to  the  laid  train  of  future  conduct,  and  every  imagina- 
tion a  fountain  of  life  or  death !  Be  thoughtless  in  any 
after  years,  rather  than  now  —  though,  indeed,  there 
is  only  one  place  where  a  man  may  be  nobly  thought- 
less,—  his  deathbed.  No  thinking  should  ever  be 
left  to  be  done  there. 

126.  Having,  then,  resolved  that  you  will  not  waste 
recklessly,  but  earnestly  use,  these  early  days  of 
yours,  remember  that  all  the  duties  of  her  children 
to  England  may  be  summed  in  two  words  —  industry, 
and  honor.     I  say  first,  industry,  for  it  is  in  this  that 


124        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   ollVE. 

soldier  youth  are  especially  tempted  to  fail.  Yet, 
surely,  there  is  no  reason,  because  your  life  may  pos- 
sibly or  probably  be  shorter  than  other  men's,  that 
you  should  therefore  waste  more  recklessly  the  portion 
of  it  that  is  granted  you ;  neither  do  the  duties  of 
your  profession,  which  require  you  to  keep  your 
bodies  strong,  in  any  wise  involve  the  keeping  of 
your  minds  weak.  So  far  from  that,  the  experience, 
the  hardship,  and  the  activity  of  a  soldier's  life  ren- 
der his  powers  of  thought  more  accurate  than  those 
of  other  men ;  and  while,  for  others,  all  knowledge 
is  often  little  more  than  a  means  of  amusement,  there 
is  no  form  of  science  which  a  soldier  may  not  at  some 
time  or  other  find  bearing  on  business  of  life  and 
death.  A  young  mathematician  may  be  excused  for 
languor  in  studying  curves  to  be  described  only  with  a 
pencil ;  but  not  in  tracing  those  which  are  to  be  de- 
scribed with  a  rocket.  Your  knowledge  of  a  whole- 
some herb  may  involve  the  feeding  of  an  army ;  and 
acquaintance  with  an  obscure  point  of  geography,  the 
success  of  a  campaign.  Never  waste  an  instant's 
time,  therefore ;  the  sin  of  idleness  is  a  thousand-fold 
greater  in  you  than  in  other  youths  ;  for  the  fates  of 
those  who  will  one  day  be  under  your  command  hang 
upon  your  knowledge ;  lost  moments  now  will  be  lost 
lives  then,  and  every  instant  which  you  carelessly 
take  for  play,  you  buy  with  blood. 

127.  But  there  is  one  way  of  wasting  time,  of  all 
the  vilest,  because  it  wastes,  not  time  only,  but  the 
interest  and  energy  of  your  minds.  Of  all  the  un- 
gentlemanly  habits  into  which  you  can  fall,  the  vilest 
is  betting,  or  interesting  yourselves  in  the  issues  of 


fVA/f.  125 

betting.  It  unites  nearly  every  condition  of  folly 
and  vice ;  you  concentrate  your  interest  upon  a  mat- 
ter of  chance,  instead  of  upon  a  subject  of  true 
knowledge  ;  and  you  back  opinions  which  you  have 
no  grounds  for  forming,  merely  because  they  are  your 
own.  All  the  insolence  of  egotism  is  in  this  ;  and  so 
far  as  the  love  of  excitement  is  complicated  with  the 
hope  of  winning  money,  you  turn  yourselves  into  the 
basest  sort  of  tradesmen  —  those  who  live  by  specu- 
lation. Were  there  no  other  ground  for  industry, 
this  would  be  a  sufficient  one ;  that  it  protected  you 
from  the  temptation  to  so  scandalous  a  vice.  Work 
faithfully,  and  you  will  put  yourselves  in  possession 
of  a  glorious  and  enlarging  happiness ;  not  such  as 
can  be  won  by  the  speed  of  a  horse,  or  marred  by 
the  obliquity  of  a  ball. 

128.  First,  then,  by  industry  you  must  fulfil  your 
vow  to  your  country ;  but  all  industry  and  earnestness 
will  be  useless  unless  they  are  consecrated  by  your 
resolution  to  be  in  all  things  men  of  honor ;  not  honor 
in  the  common  sense  only,  but  in  the  highest.  Rest 
on  the  force  of  the  two  main  words  in  the  great  verse, 
integer  vitae,  scelerisque  purus.  You  have  vowed 
your  life  to  England ;  give  it  her  wholly  —  a  bright, 
stainless,  perfect  life  —  a  knightly  life.  Because  you 
have  to  fight  with  machines  instead  of  lances,  there 
may  be  a  necessity  for  more  ghastly  danger,  but  there 
is  none  for  less  worthiness  of  character,  than  in  olden 
time.  You  may  be  true  knights  yet,  though  perhaps 
not  equites ;  you  may  have  to  call  yourselves  "  can- 
nonry  "  instead  of  "  chivalry,"  but  that  is  no  reason 
why  you  should  not  call  yourselves  true  men.     So  the 


126        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

first  thing  you  have  to  see  to  in  becoming  soldiers  is 
that  you  make  yourselves  wholly  true.  Courage  is  a 
mere  matter  of  course  among  any  ordinarily  well- 
born youths ;  but  neither  truth  nor  gentleness  is  mat- 
ter of  course.  You  must  bind  them  like  shields 
about  your  necks  ;  you  must  write  them  on  the  tables 
of  your  hearts.  Though  it  be  not  exacted  of  you, 
yet  exact  it  of  yourselves,  this  vow  of  stainless  truth. 
Your  hearts  are,  if  you  leave  them  unstirred,  as 
tombs  in  which  a  god  lies  buried.  Vow  yourselves 
crusaders  to  redeem  that  sacred  sepulchre.  And  re- 
member, before  all  things  —  for  no  other  memory 
will  be  so  protective  of  you  —  that  the  highest  law  of 
this  knightly  truth  is  that  under  which  it  is  vowed  to 
women.  Whomsoever  else  you  deceive,  whomsoever 
you  injure,  whomsoever  you  leave  unaided,  you  must 
not  deceive,  nor  injure,  nor  leave  unaided,  according 
to  your  power,  any  woman  of  whatever  rank.  Believe 
me,  every  virtue  of  the  higher  phases  of  manly  char- 
acter begins  in  this  ;  —  in  truth  and  modesty  before 
the  face  of  all  maidens ;  in  truth  and  pity,  or  truth 
and  reverence,  to  all  womanhood. 

129.  And  now  let  me  turn  for  a  moment  to  you,  — 
wives  and  maidens,  who  are  the  souls  of  soldiers ;  to 
you,  —  mothers,  who  have  devoted  your  children  to 
the  great  hierarchy  of  war.  Let  me  ask  you  to  con- 
sider what  part  you  have  to  take  for  the  aid  of  those 
who  love  you  ;  for  if  you  fail  in  your  part  they  cannot 
fulfil  theirs ;  such  absolute  helpmates  you  are  that  no 
man  can  stand  without  that  help,  nor  labor  in  his  own 
strength. 

I  know  your  hearts,  and  that  the  truth  of  theo. 


IVAR.  127 

never  fails  when  an  hour  of  trial  comes  which  you 
recognize  for  such.  But  you  know  not  when  the  hour 
of  trial  first  finds  you,  nor  when  it  verily  finds  you. 
You  imagine  that  you  are  only  called  upon  to  wait  and 
to  suffer;  to  surrender  and  to  mourn.  You  know  that 
you  must  not  weaken  the  hearts  of  your  husbands  and 
lovers,  even  by  the  one  fear  of  which  those  hearts  are 
capable,  —  the  fear  of  parting  from  you,  or  of  caus- 
ing you  grief.  Through  weary  years  of  separation ; 
through  fearful  expectancies  of  unknown  fate  ;  through 
the  tenfold  bitterness  of  the  sorrow  which  might  so 
easily  have  been  joy,  and  the  tenfold  yearning  for 
glorious  life  struck  down  in  its  prime  —  through  all 
these  agonies  you  fail  not,  and  never  will  fail.  But 
your  trial  is  not  in  these.  To  be  heroic  in  danger  is 
little  ;  —  you  are  Englishwomen.  To  be  heroic  ia 
change  and  sway  of  fortune  is  little ;  —  for  do  you 
not  love  ?  To  be  patient  through  the  great  chasm 
and  pause  of  loss  is  little  ;  —  for  do  you  not  still  love 
in  heaven  ?  But  to  be  heroic  in  happiness ;  to  bear 
yourselves  gravely  and  righteously  in  the  dazzling  ot 
the  sunshine  of  morning ;  not  to  forget  the  God  in 
whom  you  trust,  when  He  gives  you  most ;  not  to 
fail  those  who  trust  you,  when  they  seem  to  need  you 
least;  this  is  the  difficult  fortitude.  It  is  not  in  the 
oining  of  absence,  not  in  the  peril  of  battle,  not  in 
:;he  wasting  of  sickness,  that  your  prayer  should  be 
most  passionate,  or  your  guardianship  most  tender. 
Pray,  mothers  and  maidens,  for  your  young  soldiers 
in  the  bloom  of  their  pride ;  pray  for  them,  while 
the  only  dangers  round  them  are  in  their  own  way- 
ward wills  ;   watch  you,  and  pray,  when  they  have  to 


128        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

face,  not  death,  but  temptation.  But  it  is  this  forti- 
tude also  for  which  there  is  the  crowning  reward. 
Believe  me,  the  whole  course  and  character  of  your 
lovers'  lives  is  in  your  hands  ;  what  you  would  have 
them  be,  they  shall  be,  if  you  not  only  desire  to  have 
them  so,  but  deserve  to  have  them  so ;  for  they  are 
but  mirrors  in  which  you  will  see  yourselves  imaged. 
If  you  are  frivolous,  they  will  be  so  also ;  if  you  have 
no  understanding  of  the  scope  of  their  duty,  they 
also  will  forget  it ;  they  will  listen,  —  they  can  listen, 
—  to  no  other  interpretation  of  it  than  that  uttered 
from  your  lips.  Bid  them  be  brave;  —  they  will  be 
brave  for  you  ;  bid  them  be  cowards ;  and  how  noble 
soever  they  be  ;  —  they  will  quail  for  you.  Bid  them 
be  wise,  and  they  will  be  wise  for  you ;  mock  at  their 
counsel,  they  will  be  fools  for  you  :  such  and  so  abso- 
lute is  your  rule  over  them.  You  fancy,  perhaps,  as 
you  have  been  told  so  often,  that  a  wife's  rule  should 
only  be  over  her  husband's  house,  not  over  his  mind. 
Ah,  no !  the  true  rule  is  just  the  reverse  of  that;  a 
true  wife,  in  her  husband's  house,  is  his  servant ;  it 
is  in  his  heart  that  she  is  queen.  Whatever  of  best 
he  can  conceive,  it  is  her  part  to  be ;  whatever  of 
highest  he  can  hope,  it  is  hers  to  promise ;  all  that  is 
dark  in  him  she  must  purge  into  purity ;  all  that  is 
failing  in  him  she  must  strengthen  into  truth :  from 
her,  through  all  the  world's  clamor,  he  must  win  his 
praise;  in  her,  through  all  the  world's  warfare,  he 
must  find  his  peace. 

130.  And,  now,  but  one  word  more.  You  may 
wonder,  perhaps,  that  I  have  spoken  all  this  night  in 
praise  of  war.     Yet,  truly,  if  it  might  be,  I,  for  one, 


WAR.  129 

would  fain  join  in  the  cadence  of  hammer-strokes 
that  should  beat  swords  into  ploughshares :  and  that 
this  cannot  be,  is  not  the  fault  of  us  men.  It  is  your 
fault.  Wholly  yours.  Only  by  your  command,  or  by 
your  permission,  can  any  contest  take  place  among  us. 
And  the  real,  final,  reason  for  all  the  poverty,  misery, 
and  rage  of  battle,  throughout  Europe,  is  simply  that 
you  women,  however  good,  however  religious,  how- 
ever self-sacrificing  for  those  whom  you  love,  are  too 
selfish  and  too  thoughtless  to  take  pains  for  any 
creature  out  of  your  own  immediate  circles.  You 
fancy  that  you  are  sorry  for  the  pain  of  others.  Now 
I  just  tell  you  this,  that  if  the  usual  course  of  war, 
instead  of  unroofing  peasants'  houses,  and  ravaging 
peasants'  fields,  merely  broke  the  china  upon  your 
own  drawing-room  tables,  no  war  in  civilized  countries 
would  last  a  week.  I  tell  you  more,  that  at  whatever 
moment  you  chose  to  put  a  period  to  war,  you  could 
do  it  with  less  trouble  than  you  take  any  day  to  go  out 
to  dinner.  You  know,  or  at  least  you  might  know  if 
you  would  think,  that  every  battle  you  hear  of  has 
made  many  widows  and  orphans.  We  have,  none  of 
us,  heart  enough  truly  to  mourn  with  these.  But  at 
least  we  might  put  on  the  outer  symbols  of  mourning 
with  them.  Let  but  every  Christian  lady  who  has 
conscience  toward  God,  vow  that  she  will  mourn,  at 
least  outwardly,  for  His  killed  creatures.  Your  pray- 
ing is  useless,  and  your  churchgoing  mere  mockery  of 
God,  if  you  have  not  plain  obedience  in  you  enough 
for  this.  Let  every  lady  in  the  upper  classes  of  civil- 
ized Europe  simply  vow  that,  while  any  cruel  war 
proceeds,  she  will  wear  black;  —  a  mute's  black, — 


130        THE  CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE, 

with  no  jewel,  no  ornament,  no  excuse  for,  or  evasion 
into  prettiness. — I  tell  you  again,  no  war  would  last  a 
week. 

131.  And  lastly.  You  women  of  England  are 
all  now  shrieking  with  one  voice, —  you  and  your 
clergymen  together,  —  because  you  hear  of  your 
Bibles  being  attacked.  If  you  choose  to  obey  your 
Bibles,  you  will  never  care  who  attacks  them.  It  is 
just  because  you  never  fulfil  a  single  downright  pre- 
cept of  the  Book,  that  you  are  so  careful  for  its  credit : 
and  just  because  you  don't  care  to  obey  its  whole 
words,  that  you  are  so  particular  about  the  letters  of 
them.  The  Bible  tells  you  to  dress  plainly,  —  and 
you  are  mad  for  finery ;  the  Bible  tells  you  to  have 
pity  on  the  poor,  —  and  you  crush  them  under  your 
carriage-wheels ;  the  Bible  tells  you  to  do  judgment 
and  justice, — and  you  do  not  know,  nor  care  to 
know,  so  much  as  what  the  Bible  word  "justice" 
means.  Do  but  learn  so  much  of  God's  truth  as  that 
comes  to ;  know  what  He  means  when  He  tells  you 
to  be  just :  and  teach  your  sons,  that  their  bravery 
is  but  a  fool's  boast,  and  their  deeds  but  a  firebrand's 
tossing,  unless  they  are  indeed  Just  men,  and  Perfect 
in  the  Fear  of  God ;  —  and  you  will  soon  have  no 
more  war,  unless  it  be  indeed  such  as  is  willed  by 
Him,  of  whom,  though  Prince  of  Peace,  it  is  also 
written,  "  In  Righteousness  He  doth  judge,  and  make 
war." 


LECTURE    IV. 

THE  FUTURE  OF  ENGLAND. 


LECTURE  IV. 

THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND. 

Delivered  at  the  R.  A .  Institution,  Woolwich,, 
December  14,  1869. 

132.  I  WOULD  fain  have  left  to  the  frank  expression 
of  the  moment,  but  fear  I  could  not  have  found  clear 
words  —  I  cannot  easily  find  them,  even  deliberately, 
—to  tell  you  how  glad  I  am,  and  yet  how  ashamed, 
to  accept  your  permission  to  speak  to  you.  Ashamed 
of  appearing  to  think  that  I  can  tell  you  any  truth 
which  you  have  not  more  deeply  felt  than  I ;  but 
glad  in  the  thought  that  my  less  experience,  and  way 
of  life  sheltered  from  the  trials,  and  free  from  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  yours,  may  have  left  me  with  some- 
thing of  a  child's  power  of  help  to  you ;  a  sureness 
of  hope,  which  may  perhaps  be  the  one  thing  that 
can  be  helpful  to  men  who  have  done  too  much  not 
to  have  often  failed  in  doing  all  that  they  desired. 
And  indeed,  even  the  most  hopeful  of  us,  cannot  but 
now  be  in  many  things  apprehensive.  For  this  at 
least  we  all  know  too  well,  that  we  are  on  the  eve  of 
a  great  political  crisis,  if  not  of  political  change. 
That  a  struggle  is  approaching  between  the  newly- 
risen  power  of  democracy  and  the  apparently  depart- 
ing power  of  feudalism ;  and  another  struggle,  no 
less   imminent,   and    far  more   dangerous,   between 


134        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

wealth  and  pauperism.  These  two  quarrels  are  con- 
stantly thought  of  as  the  same.  They  are  being 
fought  together,  and  an  apparently  common  interest 
unites  for  the  most  part  the  millionnaire  with  the 
noble,  in  resistance  to  a  multitude,  crying,  part  of  it 
for  bread  and  part  of  it  for  liberty. 

133.  And  yet  no  two  quarrels  can  be  more  distinct. 
Riches  —  so  far  from  being  necessary  to  noblesse  — 
are  adverse  to  it.  So  utterly  adverse,  that  the  first 
character  of  all  the  Nobilities  which  have  founded 
great  dynasties  in  the  world  is  to  be  poor ;  —  often  poor 
by  oath  —  always  poor  by  generosity.  And  of  every 
true  knight  in  the  chivalric  ages,  the  first  thing  history 
tells  you  is,  that  he  never  kept  treasure  for  himself. 

134.  Thus  the  causes  of  wealth  and  noblesse  are 
not  the  same  ;  but  opposite.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
causes  of  anarchy  and  of  the  poor  are  not  the  same, 
but  opposite.  Side  by  side,  in  the  same  rank,  are 
now  indeed  set  the  pride  that  revolts  against  author- 
ity, and  the  misery  that  appeals  against  avarice.  But, 
so  far  from  being  a  common  cause,  all  anarchy  is  the 
forerunner  of  poverty,  and  all  prosperity  begins  in 
obedience.  So  that,  thus,  it  has  become  impossible 
to  give  due  support  to  the  cause  of  order,  without 
seeming  to  countenance  injury ;  and  impossible  to 
plead  justly  the  claims  of  sorrow,  without  seeming  to 
plead  also  for  those  of  license. 

Let  me  try,  then,  to  put  in  very  brief  terms,  the 
real  plan  of  this  various  quarrel,  and  the  truth  of  the 
cause  on  each  side.  Let  us  face  that  iull  truth,  what- 
ever it  may  be,  and  decide  what  part,  according  to 
our  power,  we  should  take  in  the  quarrel. 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  135 

135 .  First.  For  eleven  hundred  years,  all  but  five, 
since  Charlemagne  set  on  his  head  the  Lombard 
crown,  the  body  of  European  people  have  submitted 
patiently  to  be  governed;  generally  by  kings  —  al- 
ways by  single  leaders  of  some  kind.  But  for  the 
last  fifty  years  they  have  begun  to  suspect,  and  of 
late  they  have  many  of  them  concluded,  that  they 
have  been  on  the  whole  ill-governed,  or  misgoverned, 
by  their  kings.  Whereupon  they  say,  more  and 
more  widely,  "  Let  us  henceforth  have  no  kings  ;  and 
no  government  at  all." 

Now  we  said,  we  must  face  the  full  truth  of  the 
matter,  in  order  to  see  what  we  are  to  do.  And 
the  truth  is  that  the  people  have  been  misgoverned ; 
—  that  very  little  is  to  be  said,  hitherto,  for  most  of 
their  masters  —  and  that  certainly  in  many  places 
they  will  try  their  new  system  of  "no  masters :  " — • 
and  as  that  arrangement  will  be  delightful  to  all  fool- 
ish persons,  and,  at  first,  profitable  to  all  wicked 
ones,  —  and  as  these  classes  are  not  wanting  or  un- 
important in  any  human  society,  —  the  experiment 
is  likely  to  be  tried  extensively.  And  the  world  may 
be  quite  content  to  endure  much  suffering  with  this 
fresh  hope,  and  retain  its  faith  in  anarchy,  whatever 
comes  of  it,  till  it  can  endure  no  more. 

136.  Then,  secondly.  The  people  have  begun  to 
suspect  that  one  particular  form  of  this  past  mis- 
government  has  been,  that  their  masters  have  set 
them  to  do  all  the  work,  and  have  themselves  taken 
all  the  wages.  In  a  word,  that  what  was  called 
governing  them,  meant  only  wearing  fine  clothes, 
and  living  on  good  fare  at  their  expense.     And  I  am 


136        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

sorry  to  say,  the  people  are  quite  right  in  this  opinion 
also.  If  you  inquire  into  the  vital  fact  of  the  matter, 
this  you  will  find  to  be  the  constant  structure  of 
European  society  for  the  thousand  years  of  the  feudal 
system ;  it  was  divided  into  peasants  who  lived  by 
working ;  priests  who  lived  by  begging ;  and  knights 
who  lived  by  pillaging ;  and  as  the  luminous  public 
mind  becomes  gradually  cognizant  of  these  facts,  it 
will  assuredly  not  suffer  things  to  be  altogether  ar- 
ranged that  way  any  more  ;  and  the  devising  of  other 
ways  will  be  an  agitating  business  ;  especially  because 
the  first  impression  of  the  intelligent  populace  is,  that 
whereas,  in  the  dark  ages,  half  the  nation  lived  idle, 
(n  the  bright  ages  to  come,  the  whole  of  it  may. 

137.  Now,  thirdly  —  and  here  is  much  the  wors'; 
phase  of  the  crisis.  This  past  system  of  misgovern- 
ment,  especially  during  the  last  three  hundred  years, 
has  prepared,  by  its  neglect,  a  class  among  the  lower 
orders  which  it  is  now  peculiarly  difficult  to  govern. 
It  deservedly  lost  their  respect  —  but  that  was  the 
least  part  of  mischief.  The  deadly  part  of  it  was, 
that  the  lower  orders  lost  their  habit,  and  at  last 
their  faculty,  of  respect ;  —  lost  the  very  capability  of 
reverence,  which  is  the  most  precious  part  of  the 
human  soul.  Exactly  in  the  degree  in  which  you  can 
find  creatures  greater  than  yourself,  to  look  up  to,  in 
that  degree,  you  are  ennobled  yourself,  and,  in  that 
degree,  happy.  If  you  could  live  always  in  the  pres- 
ence of  archangels,  you  would  be  happier  than  in 
that  of  men ;  but  even  if  only  in  the  company  of 
admirable  knights  and  beautiful  ladies,  the  more 
noble  and  bright  they  were,  and  the  more  you  could 


THE   FUTURE    OF  ENGLAND.  13? 

reverence  their  virtue,  the  happier  you  wouli  be. 
On  the  contrary,  if  you  were  condemned  to  live  among 
a  multitude  of  idiots,  dumb,  distorted,  and  malicious, 
you  would  not  be  happy  in  the  constant  sense  of  your 
own  superiority.  Thus  all  real  joy  and  power  of 
progress  in  humanity  depend  on  finding  something 
to  reverence,  and  all  the  baseness  and  misery  of 
humanity  begin  in  a  habit  of  disdain.  Now,  by 
general  misgovernment,  I  repeat,  we  have  created  in 
Europe  a  vast  populace,  and  out  of  Europe  a  still 
vaster  one,  which  has  lost  even  the  power  and  con- 
ception of  reverence  ;  *  —  which  exists  only  in  the  wor- 
ship of  itself —  which  can  neither  see  anything  beauti- 
ful around  it,  nor  conceive  anything  virtuous  above  it ; 
which  has,  towards  all  goodness  and  greatness,  no 
other  feelings  than  those  of  the  lowest  creatures  — 
fear,  hatred,  or  hunger ;  a  populace  which  has  sunk 
below  your  appeal  in  their  nature,  as  it  has  risen 
beyond  your  power  in  their  multitude  ;  —  whom  you 
can  now  no  more  charm  than  you  can  the  adder,  no: 
discipline,  than  you  can  the  summer  fly. 

It  is  a  crisis,  gentlemen ;  and  time  to  think  of  it. 
I  have  roughly  and  broadly  put  it  before  you  in  its 
darkness.     Let  us  look  what  we  may  find  of  light. 

138.  Only  the  other  day,  in  a  journal  which  is  a 
fairly  representative  exponent  of  the  Conservatism  of 
our  day,  and  for  the  most  part  not  at  all  in  favor  of 
strikes  or  other  popular  proceedings ;  only  about 
three  weeks  since,  there  was  a  leader,  with  this,  or  a 
similar,  title  —  "  What  is  to  become  of  the  House  of 

*  Compare  Time  and  Tide,  §  169,  and  Fors  Clavigera,  Lettel 
XIV.  page  9. 


138        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD    OLIVE. 

Lords  ? "  It  startled  me,  for  it  seemed  as  if  we  were 
going  even  faster  than  I  had  thought,  when  such  a 
question  was  put  as  a  subject  of  quite  open  debate, 
in  a  journal  meant  chiefly  for  the  reading  of  the 
middle  and  upper  classes.  Open  or  not  —  the  debate 
is  near.  What  is  to  become  of  them?  And  the 
answer  to  such  question  depends  first  on  their  being 
able  to  answer  another  question —  "  What  is  the  use 
of  them  ?  "  For  some  time  back,  I  think  the  theory  of 
the  nation  has  been,  that  they  are  useful  as  impedi- 
ments to  business,  so  as  to  give  time  for  second 
thoughts.  But  the  nation  is  getting  impatient  of 
impediments  to  business ;  and  certainly,  sooner  or 
later,  will  think  it  needless  to  maintain  these  expen- 
sive obstacles  to  its  humors.  And  I  have  not  heard, 
either  in  public,  or  from  any  of  themselves,  a  clear 
expression  of  their  own  conception  of  their  use.  So 
that  it  seems  thus  to  become  needful  for  all  men  to 
tell  them,  as  our  one  quite  clear-sighted  teacher, 
Carlyle,  has  been  telling  us  for  many  a  year,  that  the 
use  of  the  Lords  of  a  country  is  to  govern  the  country. 
If  they  answer  that  use,  the  country  will  rejoice  in 
keeping  them  ;  if  not,  that  will  become  of  them  which 
must  of  all  things  found  to  have  lost  their  service- 
ableness. 

139.  Here,  therefore,  is  the  one  question,  at  this 
crisis,  for  them,  and  for  us.  Will  they  be  lords 
indeed,  and  give  us  laws  —  dukes  indeed,  and  give 
us  guiding  ^  princes  indeed,  and  give  us  beginning, 
of  truer  dynasty,  which  shall  not  be  soiled  by  co^'et- 
ousness,  nor  disordered  by  iniquity?  Have  they 
themselves  sunk  so  far  as   not  to  hope  this?    Are 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  139 

there  yet  any  among  them  who  can  stand  forward 
with  open  English  brows,  and  say,  —  So  far  as  in  me 
lies,  I  will  govern  with  my  might,  not  for  Dieu  et 
mon  Droit,  but  for  the  first  grand  reading  of  the  war 
cry  from  which  that  was  corrupted,  "  Dieu  et  Droit?" 
Among  them  I  know  there  are  some  —  among  you, 
soldiers  of  England,  I  know  there  are  many,  who  can 
do  this ;  and  in  you  is  our  trust.  I,  one  of  the  lower 
people  of  your  country,  ask  of  you  in  their  name,  — 
you  whom  I  will  not  any  more  call  soldiers,  but  by 
the  truer  name  of  Knights  ;  —  Equites  of  England,  — 
how  many  yet  of  you  are  there,  knights  errant  now 
beyond  all  former  fields  of  danger  —  knights  patient 
now  beyond  all  former  endurance ;  who  still  retain 
the  ancient  and  eternal  purpose  of  knighthood,  to 
subdue  the  wicked,  and  aid  the  weak?  To  them,  be 
they  few  or  many,  we  English  people  call  for  help 
to  the  wretchedness,  and  for  rule  over  the  baseness, 
of  multitudes  desolate  and  deceived,  shrieking  to  one 
another,  this  new  gospel  of  their  new  religion.  "  Let 
the  weak  do  as  they  can,  and  the  wicked  as  they 
will." 

140.  I  can  hear  you  saying  in  your  hearts,  even 
the  bravest  of  you,  "  The  time  is  past  for  all  that." 
Gentlemen,  it  is  not  so.  The  time  has  come  for 
more  than  all  that.  Hitherto,  soldiers  have  given 
their  lives  for  false  fame,  and  for  cruel  power.  The 
day  is  now  when  they  must  give  their  lives  for  true 
fame,  and  for  beneficent  power :  and  the  work  is  near 
every  one  of  you  —  close  beside  you  —  the  means  of 
it  even  thrust  into  your  hands.  The  people  are  cry- 
JDg  to  you   for  command,  and   you  stand  there  at 


I40        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

pause,  and  silent.  You  think  they  don't  want  to  be 
commanded ;  try  them ;  determine  what  is  needful 
for  them  —  honorable  for  them  ;  show  it  them,  promise 
to  bring  them  to  it,  and  they  will  follow  you  through 
fire.  "  Govern  us,"  they  cry  with  one  heart,  though 
many  minds.  They  can  be  governed  still,  these 
English  ;  they  are  men  still ;  not  gnats,  nor  serpents. 
They  love  their  old  ways  yet,  and  their  old  masters, 
and  their  old  land.  They  would  fain  live  in  it,  as 
many  as  may  stay  there,  if  you  will  show  them  how, 
there,  to  live; — or  show  them  even,  how,  there, 
like  Englishmen,  to  die. 

141.  "To  live  in  it,  as  many  as  may!"  How 
many  do  you  think  may?  How  many  can?  How 
many  do  you  want  to  live  there?  As  masters,  your 
first  object  must  be  to  increase  your  power ;  and  in 
what  does  the  power  of  a  country  consist  ?  Will  you 
have  dominion  over  its  stones,  or  over  its  clouds,  or 
over  its  souls  ?  What  do  you  mean  by  a  great  nation, 
but  a  great  multitude  of  men  who  are  true  to  each 
other,  and  strong,  and  of  worth  ?  Now  you  can  in- 
crease the  multitude  only  definitely  —  your  island  has 
only  so  much  standing  room  —  but  you  can  increase 
the  worth  ?«definitely.  It  is  but  a  little  island ;  — 
suppose,  little  as  it  is,  you  were  to  fill  it  with  friends  ? 
You  may,  and  that  easily.  You  must,  and  that 
speedily ;  or  there  will  be  an  end  to  this  England  of 
ours,  and  to  all  its  loves  and  enmities. 

142.  To  fill  this  little  island  with  true  friends  — 
men  brave,  wise  and  happy !  Is  it  so  impossible, 
think  you,  after  the  world's  eighteen  hundred  years  of 
Christianity,  and  our  own  thousand  years  of  toil,  to  fill 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  141 

only  this  little  white  gleaming  crag  with  happy 
creatures,  helpful  to  each  other?  Africa,  and  India, 
and  the  Brazilian  wide-watered  plain,  are  these  not 
wide  enough  for  the  ignorance  of  our  race  ?  have  they 
not  space  enough  for  its  pain?  Must  we  remain  here 
also  savage, —  here  at  enmity  with  each  other, —  here 
foodless,  houseless,  in  rags,  in  dust,  and  without 
hope,  as  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  us  are 
lying?  Do  not  think  it,  gentlemen.  The  thought 
that  it  is  inevitable  is  the  last  infidelity  ;  infidelity  not 
to  God  only,  but  to  every  creature  and  every  law  that 
He  has  made.  Are  we  to  think  that  the  earth  was 
only  shaped  to  be  a  globe  of  torture  ;  and  that  there 
cannot  be  one  spot  of  it  where  peace  can  rest,  or  jus- 
tice reign  ?  Where  are  men  ever  to  be  happy,  if  not 
in  England  ?  by  whom  shall  they  ever  be  taught  to  do 
right,  if  not  by  you  ?  Are  we  not  of  a  race  first  among 
the  strong  ones  of  the  earth ;  the  blood  in  us  inca- 
pable of  weariness,  unconquerable  by  grief  ?  Have 
we  not  a  history  of  which  we  can  hardly  think  with- 
out becoming  insolent  in  our  just  pride  of  it  ?  Can 
we  dare,  without  passing  every  limit  of  courtesy  to 
other  nations,  to  say  how  much  more  we  have  to  be 
proud  of  in  our  ancestors  than  they?  Among  our 
ancient  monarchs,  great  crimes  stand  out  as  mon- 
strous and  strange.  But  their  valor,  and,  according  to 
their  understanding,  their  benevolence,  are  constant. 
The  Wars  of  the  Roses,  which  are  as  a  fearftil  crim- 
son shadow  on  our  land,  represent  the  normal  condi- 
tion of  other  nations ;  while  from  the  days  of  the 
Heptarchy  downwards  we  have  had  examples  given 
us,  in  all  ranks,  of  the  most  varied  and  exalted 


142         THE    CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

virtue ;  a  heap  of  treasure  that  no  moth  can  corrupt, 
and  which  even  our  traitorship,  if  we  are  to  become 
traitors  to  it,  cannot  sully. 

143.  And  this  is  the  race,  then,  that  we  know  not 
any  more  how  to  govern!  and  this  the  history 
which  we  are  to  behold  broken  off  by  sedition !  and 
this  is  the  country,  of  all  others,  where  life  is  to  be- 
come difficult  to  the  honest,  and  ridiculous  to  the 
wise  !  And  the  catastrophe,  forsooth,  is  to  come  just 
when  we  have  been  making  swiftest  progress  beyond 
the  wisdom  and  wealth  of  the  past.  Our  cities  are  a 
wilderness  of  spinning  wheels  instead  of  palaces  ;  yet 
the  people  have  not  clothes.  We  have  blackened 
every  leaf  of  English  greenwood  with  ashes,  and  the 
people  die  of  cold ;  our  harbors  are  a  forest  of  mer- 
chant ships,  and  the  people  die  of  hunger. 

Whose  fault  is  it?  Yours,  gentlemen;  yours  only. 
You  alone  can  feed  them,  and  clothe,  and  bring  into 
their  right  minds,  for  you  only  can  govern  —  that  is 
to  say,  you  only  can  educate  them. 

144.  Educate,  or  govern,  they  are  one  and  the 
same  word.  Education  does  not  mean  teaching 
people  to  know  what  they  do  not  know.  It  means 
teaching  them  to  behave  as  they  do  not  behave.  And 
the  true  "compulsory  education "  which  the  people 
now  ask  of  you  is  not  catechism,  but  drill.  It  is  not 
teaching  the  youth  of  England  the  shapes  of  letters 
and  the  tricks  of  numbers ;  and  then  leaving  them  to 
turn  their  arithmetic  to  roguery,  and  their  literature 
to  lust.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  training  them 
into  the  perfect  exercise  and  kingly  continence  of 
their  bodies  and  souls.     It  is  a  painful,  continual, 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  I43 

and  difficult  work  ;  to  be  done  by  kindness,  by  watch- 
ing, by  warning,  by  precept,  and  by  praise, — but 
above  all  — by  example. 

145.  Compulsory!  Yes,  by  all  means!  "Go  ye 
out  into  the  highways  and  hedges,  and  compel  them 
to  come  in."  Compulsory!  Yes,  and  gratis  also. 
Dei  Gratia,  they  must  be  taught,  as,  Dei  Gratia, 
you  are  set  to  teach  them.  I  hear  strange  talk  con- 
tinually, "  how  difficult  it  is  to  make  people  pay  for 
being  educated ! "  Why,  I  should  think  so !  Do 
you  make  your  children  pay  for  their  education,  or 
do  you  give  it  them  compulsorily,  and  gratis?  You 
do  not  expect  them  to  pay  you  for  their  teaching, 
except  by  becoming  good  children.  Why  should  you 
expect  a  peasant  to  pay  for  his,  except  by  becoming 
a  good  man?  —  payment  enough,  I  think,  if  we  knew 
it.  Payment  enough  to  himself,  as  to  us.  For  that 
is  another  of  our  grand  popular  mistakes  —  people 
are  always  thinking  of  education  as  a  means  of  liveli- 
hood. Education  is  not  a  profitable  business,  but 
a  costly  one  ;  nay,  even  the  best  attainments  of  it  are 
always  unprofitable,  in  any  terms  of  coin.  No  nation 
ever  made  its  bread  either  by  its  great  arts,  or  its 
great  wisdoms.  By  its  minor  arts  or  manufactures, 
by  its  practical  knowledges,  yes  :  but  its  noble 
scholarship,  its  noble  philosophy,  and  its  noble  art, 
are  always  to  be  bought  as  a  treasure,  not  sold  for  a 
livelihood.  You  do  not  learn  that  you  may  live  — 
you  live  that  you  may  learn.  You  are  to  spend  on 
National  Education,  and  to  be  spent  for  it,  and  to 
make  by  it,  not  more  money,  but  better  men ;  — 
to  get  into  this  British  Island  the  greatest  possible 


144        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD    OLIVE. 

number  of  good  and  brave  Englishmen.  They  are  to 
be  your  "  money's  worth." 

But  where  is  the  money  to  come  from?  Yes,  that 
is  to  be  asked.  Let  us,  as  quite  the  first  business  in 
this  our  national  crisis,  look  not  only  into  our  affairs, 
but  into  our  accounts,  and  obtain  some  general 
notion  how  we  annually  spend  our  money,  and  what 
we  are  getting  for  it.  Observe,  I  do  not  mean  lo 
inquire  into  the  public  revenue  only ;  of  that  some 
account  is  rendered  already.  But  let  us  do  the  best 
we  can  to  set  down  the  items  of  the  national  private 
expenditure ;  and  know  what  we  spend  altogether, 
and  how. 

146.  Tobegin  with  this  matter  of  education.  You 
probably  have  nearly  all  seen  the  admirable  lecture 
lately  given  by  Captain  Maxse,  at  Southampton.  It 
contains  a  clear  statement  of  the  facts  at  present 
ascertained  as  to  our  expenditure  in  that  respect.  It 
appears  that  of  our  public  moneys,  for  every  pound 
that  we  spend  on  education  we  spend  twelve  either 
in  charity  or  punishment ;  —  ten  millions  a  year  in 
pauperism  and  crime,  and  eight  hundred  thousand  in 
instruction.  Now  Captain  Maxse  adds  to  this  esti- 
mate of  ten  millions  public  money  spent  on  crime 
and  want,  a  more  or  less  conjectural  sum  of  eight 
millions  for  private  charities.  My  impression  is  that 
this  is  much  beneath  the  truth,  but  at  all  events  it 
leaves  out  of  consideration  much  the  heaviest  and 
saddest  form  of  charity  —  the  maintenance,  by  the 
working  members  of  families,  of  the  unfortunate  or  ill- 
conducted  persons  whom  the  general  course  of  misrule 
now  leaves  helpless  to  be  the  burden  of  the  rest. 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  145 

147.  Now  I  want  to  get  first  at  some,  I  do  not  say 
approximate,  but  at  all  events  some  suggestive,  esti- 
mate of  the  quantity  of  real  distress  and  misguided 
.ife  in  this  country.  Then  next,  I  want  some  fairly 
representative  estimate  of  our  private  expenditure  in 
luxuries.  We  won't  spend  more,  publicly,  it  appears, 
than  eight  hundred  thousand  a  year,  on  educating 
men,  gratis.  I  want  to  know,  as  nearly  as  possible, 
what  we  spend  privately  a  year,  in  educating  horses 
gratis.  Let  us,  at  least,  quit  ourselves  in  this  from 
the  taunt  of  Rabshakeh,  and  see  that  for  every  horse 
we  train  also  a  horseman ;  and  that  the  rider  be  at 
least  as  high-bred  as  the  horse,  not  jockey,  but 
chevalier.  Again,  we  spend  eight  hundred  thousand, 
which  is  certainly  a  great  deal  of  money,  in  making 
rough  minds  bright.  I  want  to  know  how  much  we 
spend  annually  in  making  rough  stones  bright ;  that 
is  to  say,  what  may  be  the  united  annual  sum,  or 
near  it,  of  our  jewellers'  bills.  So  much  we  pay  for 
educating  children  gratis  ;  —  how  much  for  educating 
diamonds  gratis  ?  and  which  pays  best  for  brighten- 
ing, the  spirit,  or  the  charcoal?  Let  us  get  those  two 
items  set  down  with  some  sincerity,  and  a  few  more 
of  the  same  kind.  Publicly  set  down.  We  must  not 
be  ashamed  of  the  way  we  spend  our  money.  If 
our  right  hand  is  not  to  know  what  our  left  does, 
it  must  not  be  because  it  would  be  ashamed  if  it  did. 

That  is,  therefore,  quite  the  first  practical  thing  to 
be  done.  Let  every  man  who  wishes  well  to  his 
country,  render  it  yearly  an  account  of  his  income, 
and  of  the  main  heads  of  his  expenditure  ;  or,  if  he  is 
ashamed  to  do  so,  let  him  no  more  impute  to  the 


146        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

poor  their  poverty  as  a  crime,  nor  set  them  to  break 
stones  in  order  to  frighten  them  from  committing  it. 
To  lose  money  ill  is  indeed  often  a  crime  ;  but  to  get 
it  ill  is  a  worse  one,  and  to  spend  it  ill,  worst  of  all. 
You  object,  Lords  of  England,  to  increase,  to  the 
poor,  the  wages"  you  give  them,  because  they  spend 
them,  you  say,  unadvisedly.  Render  them,  there- 
fore, an  account  of  the  wages  which  they  give  you ; 
and  show  them,  by  your  example,  how  to  spend 
theirs,  to  the  last  farthing,  advisedly. 

148.  It  is  indeed  time  to  make  this  an  acknowl- 
edged subject  of  instruction,  to  the  working-man,  — 
how  to  spend  his  wages.  For,  gentlemen,  we  must 
give  that  instruction,  whether  we  will  or  no,  one  way 
or  the  other.  We  have  given  it  in  years  gone  by ; 
and  now  we  find  fault  with  our  peasantry  for  having 
been  too  docile,  and  profited  too  shrewdly  by  our 
tuition.  Only  a  few  days  since  I  had  a  letter  from 
the  wife  of  a  village  rector,  a  man  of  common  sense 
and  kindness,  who  was  greatly  troubled  in  his  mind 
because  it  was  precisely  the  men  who  got  highest 
wages  in  summer  that  came  destitute  to  his  door  in  the 
winter.  Destitute,  and  of  riotous  temper — for  their 
method  of  spending  wages  in  their  period  of  pros- 
perity was  by  sitting  two  days  a  week  in  the  tavern 
parlor,  ladling  port  wine,  not  out  of  bowls,  but  out 
of  buckets.  Well,  gentlemen,  who  taught  them  that 
method  of  festivity?  Thirty  years  ago,  I,  a  most  in- 
experienced freshman,  went  to  my  first  college  sup- 
per ;  at  the  head  of  the  table  sat  a  nobleman  of  high 
promise  and  of  admirable  powers,  since  dead  of 
palsy;  there  also  we  had  in  the  midst  of  us,  not 


THE  FUTURE   OF  EN'GLAND.  147 

buckets,  indeed,  but  bowls  as  large  as  buckets  ;  there 
also,  we  helped  ourselves  with  ladles.  There  (for 
this  beginning  of  college  education  was  compulsory), 
I,  choosing  ladlefuls  of  punch  instead  of  claret,  be- 
cause I  was  then  able,  unperceived,  to  pour  them  into 
my  waistcoat  instead  of  down  my  throat,  stood  it 
out  to  the  end,  and  helped  to  carry  four  of  my  fellow 
students,  one  of  them  the  son  of  the  head  of  a 
college,  head  foremost,  down  stairs  and  home. 

149.  Such  things  are  no  more ;  but  the  fruit  of 
them  remains,  and  will  for  many  a  day  to  come. 
The  laborers  whom  you  cannot  now  shut  out  of  the 
ale-house  are  only  the  too  faithful  disciples  of  the 
gentlemen  who  were  wont  to  shut  themselves  into 
the  dining-room.  The  gentlemen  have  not  thought 
it  necessary,  in  order  to  correct  their  own  habits,  to 
diminish  their  incomes ;  and,  believe  me,  the  way  to 
deal  with  your  drunken  workman  is  not  to  lower  his 
wages, —  but  to  mend  his  wits.* 

150.  And  if  indeed  we  do  not  yet  see  quite  clearly 
how  to  deal  with  the  sins  of  our  poor  brother,  it  is 
possible  that  our  dimness  of  sight  may  still  have  other 
causes  that  can  be  cast  out.  There  are  two  opposite 
cries  of  the  great  Liberal  and  Conservative  parties, 
which  are  both  most  right,  and  worthy  to  be  rallying 
cries.  On  their  side,  '*  Let  every  man  have  his 
chance;"  on  yours,  "Let  every  man  stand  in  his 
place."  Yes,  indeed,  let  that  be  so,  every  man  in  his 
place,  and  every  man  fit  for  it.  See  that  he  holds 
that  place  from  Heaven's  Providence ;  and  not  from 
his  family's    Providence.     Let  the    Lords    Spiritual 

•  Compare  §  70  of  Time  and  Tid*. 


14^        THE  CROWN  OF  WILD   OLIVE. 

quit  themselves  of  simony,  we  laymen  will  look  after 
the  heretics  for  them.  Let  the  Lords  Temporal  quit 
themselves  of  nepotism,  and  we  will  take  care  of 
their  authority  for  them.  Publish  for  us,  you 
soldiers,  an  army  gazette,  in  which  the  one  subject  of 
daily  intelligence  shall  be  the  grounds  of  promotion ; 
a  gazette  which  shall  simply  tell  us,  what  there  cer- 
tainly can  be  no  detriment  to  the  service  in  our  know- 
ing, when  any  officer  is  appointed  to  a  new  command, 
—  what  his  former  services  and  successes  have  been, 
— whom  he  has  superseded, —  and  on  what  ground. 
It  will  be  always  a  satisfaction  to  us ;  it  may  some- 
times be  an  advantage  to  you  :  and  then,  when  there 
is  really  necessary  debate  respecting  reduction  of 
wages,  let  us  always  begin  not  with  the  wages  of  the 
industrious  classes,  but  with  those  of  the  idle  ones 
Let  there  be  honorary  titles,  if  people  like  them  ;  bu; 
let  there  be  no  honorary  incomes. 

151.  So  much  for  the  master's  motto,  "Every 
man  in  his  place."  Next  for  the  laborer's  motto, 
"  Every  man  his  chance."  Let  us  mend  that  for 
them  a  little,  and  say,  "  Every  man  his  certainty"  — 
certainty,  that  if  he  does  well,  he  will  be  honored, 
and  aided,  and  advanced  in  such  degree  as  may  be 
fitting  for  his  faculty  and  consistent  with  his  peace ; 
and  equal  certainty  that  if  he  does  ill,  he  will  by  sure 
justice  be  judged,  and  by  sure  punishment  be  chas- 
tised ;  if  it  may  be,  corrected ;  and  if  that  may  not 
be,  condemned.  That  is  the  right  reading  of  the 
Republican  motto,  "  Every  man  his  chance."  And 
then,  with  such  a  system  of  government,  pure, 
watchful,  and  just,  you  may  approach  your  great 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  149 

problem  of  national  education,  or  in  other  words,  ot 
national  employment.  For  all  education  begins  in 
work.  What  we  think,  or  what  we  know,  or  what 
we  believe,  is  in  the  end,  of  little  consequence.  The 
only  thing  of  consequence  is  what  we  do :  and  for 
man,  woman  or  child,  the  first  point  of  education  is 
to  make  them  do  their  best.  It  is  the  law.of  good 
economy  to  make  the  best  of  everything.  How  much 
more  to  make  the  best  of  every  creature !  There- 
fore, when  your  pauper  comes  to  you  and  asks  for 
bread,  ask  of  him  instantly  —  What  faculty  have  you  ? 
What  can  you  do  best?  Can  you  drive  a  nail  into 
wood?  Go  and  mend  the  parish  fences.  Can  you 
lay  a  brick  ?  Mend  the  walls  of  the  cottages  where 
the  wind  comes  in.  Can  you  Hft  a  spadeful  of  earth? 
Turn  this  field  up  three  feet  deep  all  over.  Can  you 
only  drag  a  weight  with  your  shoulders  ?  Stand  at 
ihe  bottom  of  this  hill  and  help  up  the  overladen 
horses.  Can  you  weld  iron  and  chisel  stone?  For- 
tify this  wreck-strewn  coast  into  a  harbor ;  and 
change  these  shifting  sands  into  fruitful  ground. 
Wherever  death  was,  bring  life ;  that  is  to  be  your 
work  ;  that  your  parish  refuge  ;  that  your  education. 
So  and  no  otherwise  can  we  meet  existent  distress. 
But  for  the  continual  education  of  the  whole  people, 
and  for  their  future  happiness,  they  must  have  such 
consistent  employment,  as  shall  develop  all  the 
powers  of  the  fingers,  and  the  limbs,  and  the  brain : 
and  that  development  is  only  to  be  obtained  by  hand- 
labor,  of  which  you  have  these  four  great  divisions 
—  hand-labor  on  the  earth,  hand-labor  on  the  sea, 
iiand-labor  in  art,  hand-labor  in  war.     Of  the  last 


15°         THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

two  of  these  I  cannot  speak  to-night,  and  of  the  first 
two  only  with  extreme  brevity. 

152.  I.  Hand-labor  on  the  earth,  the  work  of  the 
husbandman  and  of  the  shepherd ;  —  to  dress  the 
earth  and  to  keep  the  flocks  of  it  —  the  first  task  of 
man,  and  the  final  one  —  the  education  always  of 
noblest  lawgivers,  kings  and  teachers  ;  the  education 
of  Hesiod,  of  Moses,  of  David,  of  all  the  true  strength 
of  Rome ;  and  all  its  tenderness :  the  pride  of  Cin- 
cinnatus,  and  the  inspiration  of  Virgil.  Hand-labor 
on  the  earth,  and  the  harvest  of  it  brought  forth  with 
singing :  —  not  steam-piston  labor  on  the  earth, 
and  the  harvest  of  it  brought  forth  with  steam-whis- 
tling. You  will  have  no  prophet's  voice  accompanied 
by  that  shepherd's  pipe,  and  pastoral  symphony.  Do 
you  know  that  lately,  in  Cumberland,  in  the  chief 
pastoral  district  of  England,  —  in  Wordsworth's  own 
home,  —  a  procession  of  villagers  on  their  festa  day 
provided  for  themselves,  by  way  of  music,  a  steam- 
plough  whistling  at  the  head  of  them  ! 

153.  Give  me  patience  while  I  put  the  principle  of 
machine  labor  before  you,  as  clearly  and  in  as  short 
compass  as  possible ;  it  is  one  that  should  be  known 
at  this  juncture.  Suppose  a  farming  proprietor  needs 
to  employ  a  hundred  men  on  his  estate,  and  that 
the  labor  of  these  hundred  men  is  enough,  but  not 
more  than  enough,  to  till  all  his  land,  and  to  raise 
from  it  food  foi  his  own  family,  and  for  the  hundred 
laborers.  He  is  obliged  under  such  circumstances, 
to  maintain  all  the  men  in  moderate  comfort,  and 
can  only  by  economy  accumulate  much  for  himself. 
But,  suppose  he  contrive  a  machine  that  will  easily 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  151 

do  the  work  of  fifty  men,  with  only  one  man  to  watch 
it.  This  sounds  like  a  great  advance  in  civilization. 
The  farmer  of  course  gets  his  machine  made,  turns 
off  the  fifty  men,  who  may  starve  or  emigrate  at  their 
choice,  and  now  he  can  keep  half  of  the  produce  of 
his  estate,  which  formerly  went  to  feed  them,  all  to 
himself.  That  is  the  essential  and  constant  opera- 
tion of  machinery  among  us  at  this  moment. 

154.  Nay,  it  is  at  first  answered;  no  man  can  in 
reality  keep  half  the  produce  of  an  estate  to  himself, 
nor  can  he  in  the  end  keep  more  than  his  own  human 
share  of  anything ;  his  riches  must  diffuse  themselves 
at  some  time  ;  he  must  maintain  somebody  else  with 
them,  however  he  spends  them.  That  is  mainly  true 
(not  altogether  so) ,  for  food  and  fuel  are  in  ordinary 
circumstances  personally  wasted  by  rich  people,  in 
quantities  which  would  save  many  lives.  One  of  my 
own  great  luxuries,  for  instance,  is  candlelight  — 
and  I  probably  burn,  for  myself  alone,  as  many 
candles  during  the  winter,  as  would  comfort  the  old 
eyes,  or  spare  the  young  ones,  of  a  whole  rushlighted 
country  village.  Still,  it  is  mainly  true  that  it  is  not 
by  their  personal  waste  that  rich  people  prevent 
the  lives  of  the  poor.  This  is  the  way  they  do  it. 
Let  me  go  back  to  my  farmer.  He  has  got  his 
machine  made,  which  goes  creaking,  screaming,  and 
occasionally  exploding,  about  modern  Arcadia.  He 
has  turned  off  his  fifty  men  to  starve.  Now,  at  some 
distance  from  his  own  farm,  there  is  another  on  which 
the  laborers  were  working  for  their  bread  in  the 
same  way,  by  tilling  the  land.  The  machinist  sends 
over  to  these,  saying  —  "I  have  got  food   enough 


152         THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

for  you  without  your  digging  or  ploughing  any  more. 
I  can  maintain  you  in  other  occupations  instead  o' 
ploughing  that  land ;  if  you  rake  in  its  gravel  you  will 
find  some  hard  stones  —  you  shall  grind  those  on 
mills  till  they  glitter ;  then,  my  wife  shall  wear  a 
necklace  of  them.  Also,  if  you  turn  up  the  meadows 
jelow  you  will  find  some  fine  white  clay,  of  which 
you  shall  make  a  porcelain  service  for  me :  and  the 
rest  of  the  farm  I  want  for  pasture  for  horses  for 
my  carriage —  and  you  shall  groom  them,  and  some 
of  you  ride  behind  the  carriage  with  staves  in  your 
hands,  and  I  will  keep  you  much  fatter  for  doing 
that  than  you  can  keep  yourselves  by  digging." 

155.  Well  —  but  it  is  answered,  are  we  to  have  no 
diamonds,  nor  china,  nor  pictures,  nor  footmen,  then 
—  but  all  to  be  farmers  ?  I  am  not  saying  what  we 
ought  to  do,  I  want  only  to  show  you  with  perfect 
clearness  first  what  we  are  doing;  and  that,  I  repeat 
is  the  upshot  of  machine-contriving  in  this  country 
And  observe  its  effect  on  the  national  strength 
Without  machines,  you  have  a  hundred  and  fifty 
yeomen  ready  to  join  for  defence  of  the  land.  You 
get  your  machine,  starve  fifty  of  them,  make  diamond- 
cutters  or  footmen  of  as  many  more,  and  for  your 
national  defence  against  an  enemy,  you  have  now, 
and  can  have,  only  fifty  men,  instead  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty ;  these  also  now  with  minds  much  alienated 
from  you  as  their  chief,*  and  the  rest,  lapidaries  or 
footmen ;  —  and  a  steam  plough. 

1 56.  That  is  the  one  effect  of  machinery ;  but  at 

*  [They  were  deserting,  I  am  informed,  in  the  early  part  of  this 
year,  1873,  at  the  rate  of  a  regiment  a  week.] 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  153 

all  events,  if  we  have  thus  lost  in  men,  we  have 
gained  in  riches ;  instead  of  happy  human  souls,  we 
have  at  least  got  pictures,  china,  horses,  and  are 
ourselves  better  off  than  we  were  before.  But  very 
often,  and  in  much  of  our  machine-contriving,  even 
that  result  does  not  follow.  We  are  not  one  whit 
the  richer  for  the  machine,  we  only  employ  it  for 
our  amusement.  For  observe,  our  gaining  in  riches 
depends  on  the  men  who  are  out  of  employment 
consenting  to  be  starved,  or  sent  ou;;  of  the  country. 
But  suppose  they  do  not  consent  passively  to  be 
starved,  but  some  of  them  become  criminals,  and 
have  to  be  taken  charge  of  and  fed  at  a  much  greater 
cost  than  if  they  were  at  work,  and  others,  paupers, 
rioters,  and  the  like,  then  you  attain  the  real  outcome 
of  modern  wisdom  and  ingenuity.  You  had  your  hun- 
dred men  honestly  at  country  work ;  but  you  don't  like 
the  sight  of  human  beings  in  your  fields  ;  you  like  bet- 
ter to  see  a  smoking  kettle.  You  pay,  as  an  amateur, 
for  that  pleasure,  and  you  employ  your  fifty  men  in 
picking  oakum,  or  begging,  rioting,  and  thieving. 

157.  By  hand-labor,  therefore,  and  that  alone,  we 
are  to  till  the  ground.  By  hand-labor  also  to  plough 
the  sea ;  both  for  food,  and  in  commerce,  and  in  war: 
not  with  floating  kettles  there  neither,  but  with 
hempen  bridle,  and  the  winds  of  heaven  in  harness. 
That  is  the  way  the  power  of  Greece  rose  on  her 
Egean,  the  power  of  Venice  on  her  Adria,  of  Amalfi 
in  her  blue  bay,  of  the  Norman  sea-riders  from  the 
North  Cape  to  Sicily: — so,  your  own  dominion  also 
of  the  past.  Of  the  past,  mind  you.  On  the  Baltic 
and  the   Nile,  your  power  is  already  departed.     By 


154        THE   CROWN  OF   WILD   OLIVE. 

machinery  you  would  advance  to  discovery ;  by 
machinery  you  would  carry  your  commerce; — you 
would  be  engineers  instead  of  sailors ;  and  instantly 
in  the  North  seas  you  are  beaten  among  the  ice,  and 
before  the  very  Gods  of  Nile,  beaten  among  the 
sand.  Agriculture,  then,  by  the  hand  or  by  the 
plough  drawn  only  by  animals  ;  and  shepherd  and  pas- 
toral husbandry,  are  to  be  the  chief  schools  of  English- 
men. And  this  most  royal  academy  of  all  academies 
you  have  to  open  over  all  the  land,  purifying  your 
heaths  and  hills,  and  waters,  and  keeping  them  full 
of  every  kind  of  lovely  natural  organism,  in  tree, 
herb,  and  living  creature.  All  land  that  is  waste  and 
ugly,  you  must  redeem  into  ordered  fruitfulness ;  all 
ruin,  desolateness,  imperfectness  of  hut  or  habitation, 
you  must  do  away  with ;  and  throughout  every  vil- 
lage and  city  of  your  English  dominion,  there  must 
not  be  a  hand  that  cannot  find  a  helper,  nor  a  heart 
that  cannot  find  a  comforter. 

158.  "  How  impossible ! "  I  know,  you  are  thinking. 
Ah !  So  far  from  impossible,  it  is  easy,  it  is  natural, 
it  is  necessary,  and  I  declare  to  you  that,  sooner  or 
later,  it  must  be  done,  at  our  peril.  If  now  our  Eng- 
lish lords  of  land  will  fix  this  idea  steadily  before  them  ; 
take  the  people  to  their  hearts,  trust  to  their  loyalty, 
lead  their  labor ;  —  then  indeed  there  will  be  princes 
again  in  the  midst  of  us,  worthy  of  the  island  throne, 

"  This  royal  throne  of  kings —  this  sceptred  isle  — 
This  fortress  built  by  nature  for  herself 
Against  infection,  and  the  hand  of  war ; 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea ; 
This  happy  breed  of  men  —  this  little  world: 
This  other  Eden  —  Demi-Paradise." 


THE  FUTURE   OF  ENGLAND.  155 

But  if  they  refuse  to  do  this,  and  hesitate  and  equiv- 
ocate, clutching  through  the  confused  catastrophe  of 
all  things  only  at  what  they  can  still  keep  stealthily 
for  themselves, —  their  doom  is  nearer  than  even  their 
adversaries  hope,  and  it  will  be  deeper  than  even 
their  despisers  dream. 

159.  That,  believe  me,  is  the  work  you  have  to  do 
in  England ;  and  out  of  England  you  have  room  for 
everything  else  you  care  to  do.  Are  her  dominions 
in  the  world  so  narrow  that  she  can  find  no  place  to 
spin  cotton  in  but  Yorkshire?  We  may  organize 
emigration  into  an  infinite  power.  We  may  assemble 
troops  of  the  more  adventurous  and  ambitious  erf  our 
youth  ;  we  may  send  them  on  truest  foreign  service, 
founding  new  seats  of  authority,  and  centres  of 
thought,  in  uncultivated  and  unconquered  lands ;  re- 
taining the  full  affection  to  the  native  country  no  less 
in  our  colonists  than  in  our  armies,  teaching  them  to 
maintain  allegiance  to  their  fatherland  in  labor  no  less 
than  in  battle ;  aiding  them  with  free  hand  in  the 
prosecution  of  discovery,  and  the  victory  over  adverse 
natural  powers ;  establishing  seats  of  every  manu- 
facture in  the  climates  and  places  best  fitted  for  it, 
and  bringing  ourselves  into  due  alliance  and  harmony 
of  skill  with  the  dexterities  of  every  race,  and  the 
wisdoms  of  every  tradition  and  every  tongue. 

160.  And  then  you  may  make  England  itself  the 
centre  of  the  learning,  of  the  arts,  of  the  courtesies 
and  felicities  of  the  world.  You  may  cover  her 
mountains  with  pasture ;  her  plains  with  corn,  her 
valleys  with  the  lily,  and  her  gardens  with  the  rose. 
You  may  bring  together  there  in  peace  the  wise  and 


156        THE   CROWN  OF  WILD  OLIVE. 

the  pure,  and  the  gentle  of  the  earth,  and  by  their 
word,  command  through  its  farthest  darkness  the 
birth  of  "  God's  first  creature,  which  was  Light." 
You  know  whose  words  those  are  ;  the  words  of  the 
wisest  of  Englishmen.  He,  and  with  him  the  wisest 
of  all  other  great  nations,  have  spoken  always  to 
men  of  this  hope,  and  they  would  not  hear.  Plato, 
in  the  dialogue  of  Critias,  his  last,  broken  off  at  his 
death, —  Pindar,  in  passionate  singing  of  the  fortu- 
nate islands, —  Virgil,  in  the  prophetic  tenth  eclogue, 
— Bacon,  in  his  fable  of  the  New  Atlantis, —  More, 
in  the  book  which,  too  impatiently  wise,  became  the 
bye-word  of  fools  —  these,  all,  have  told  us  with  one 
voice  what  we  should  strive  to  attain ;  they  not  hope- 
less of  it,  but  for  our  follies  forced,  as  it  seems,  by 
heaven,  to  tell  us  only  partly  and  in  parables,  lest  we 
should  hear  them  and  obey. 

Shall  we  never  listen  to  the  words  of  these  wisest 
of  men?  Then  listen  at  least  to  the  words  of  your 
children  —  let  us  in  the  lips  of  babes  and  sucklings 
find  our  strength  ;  and  see  that  we  do  not  make  them 
mock  instead  of  pray,  when  we  teach  them,  night  and 
morning,  to  ask  for  what  we  believe  never  can  be 
granted  ;  —  that  the  will  of  the  Father, —  which  is, 
that  His  creatures  may  be  righteous  and  happy, — 
should  be  done,  on  earth,  as  it  is  in  Heaven. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX. 


NOTES  ON  THE  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA. 

I  AM  often  accused  of  inconsistency;  but  believe 
myself  defensible  against  the  charge  with  respect  to 
what  I  have  said  on  nearly  every  subject  except  that 
of  war.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  write  consistently 
of  war,  for  the  groups  of  facts  I  have  gathered  about 
it  lead  me  to  two  precisely  opposite  conclusions. 

When  I  find  this  the  case,  in  other  matters,  I  am 
silent,  till  I  can  choose  my  conclusion :  but,  with 
respect  to  war,  I  am  forced  to  speak,  by  the  necessi- 
ties of  time ;  and  forced  to  act,  one  way  or  another. 
The  conviction  on  which  I  act  is,  that  it  causes  an 
incalculable  amount  of  avoidable  human  suffering, 
and  that  it  ought  to  cease  among  Christian  nations  ; 
and  if  therefore  any  of  my  boy-friends  desire  to  be 
soldiers,  I  try  my  utmost  to  bring  them  into  what  I 
conceive  to  be  a  better  mind.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  know  certainly  that  the  most  beautiful  char- 
acters yet  developed  among  men  have  been  formed 
in  war ;  —  that  all  great  nations  have  been  warrior 
nations,  and  that  the  only  kinds  of  peace  which  we 
are  likely  to  get  in  the  present  age  are  ruinous  alike 
to  the  intellect,  and  the  heart. 

M9 


l6o  APPENDIX. 

The  third  lecture,  in  tiiis  volume,  addressed  to 
young  soldiers,  had  for  its  object  to  strengthen  their 
trust  in  the  virtue  of  their  profession.  It  is  incon- 
sistent with  itself,  in  its  closing  appeal  to  women, 
praying  them  to  use  their  influence  to  bring  wars  to 
an  end.  And  1  have  been  hindered  from  completing 
my  long  intended  notes  on  the  economy  of  the  Kings 
of  Prussia  by  continually  increasing  doubt  how  far 
the  machinery  and  discipline  of  war,  under  which 
they  learned  the  art  of  government,  was  essential  for 
such  lesson ;  and  what  the  honesty  and  sagacity  of 
the  Friedrich  who  so  nobly  repaired  his  ruined  Prussia, 
might  have  done  for  the  happiness  of  his  Prussia, 
vnruined. 

In  war,  however,  or  in  peace,  the  character  which 
Carlyle  chiefly  loves  him  for,  and  in  which  Carlyle 
has  shown  him  to  differ  from  all  kings  up  to  this  time 
succeeding  him,  is  his  constant  purpose  to  use  every 
power  intrusted  to  him  for  the  good  of  his  people ; 
and  be,  not  in  name  only,  but  in  heart  and  hand, 
their  king. 

Not  in  ambition,  but  in  natural  instinct  of  duty. 
Friedrich,  born  to  govern,  determines  to  govern  to  the 
best  of  his  faculty.  That  "  best  "  may  sometimes  be 
unwise ;  and  self-will,  or  love  of  glory,  may  have 
their  oblique  hold  on  his  mind,  and  warp  it  this  way 
or  that;  but  they  are  never  principal  with  him.  He 
believes  that  war  is  necessary,  and  maintains  it ;  sees 
that  peace  is  necessary,  and  calmly  persists  in  the 
work  of  it  to  the  day  of  his  death,  not  claiming 
therein  more  praise  than  the  head  of  any  ordinary 
household,   who  rules  it  simply  because  it  is  his 


POLITICAL    ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     l6l 

place,  and  he  must  not  yield  the  mastery  of  it  to 
another. 

How  far,  in  the  future,  it  may  be  possible  for  men 
to  gain  the  strength  necessary  for  kingship  without 
either  fronting  death,  or  inflicting  it,  seems  to  me  not 
at  present  determinable.  The  historical  facts  are  that, 
broadly  speaking,  none  but  soldiers,  or  persons  with 
a  soldierly  faculty,  have  ever  yet  shown  themselves 
fit  to  be  kings  ;  and  that  no  other  men  are  so  gentle, 
so  just,  or  so  clear-sighted.  Wordsworth's  character 
of  the  happy  warrior  cannot  be  reached  in  the  height 
of  it  bid  by  a  warrior ;  nay,  so  much  is  it  beyond 
common  strength  that  1  had  supposed  the  entire 
meaning  of  it  to  be  metaphorical,  until  one  of  the 
best  soldiers  of  England  himself  read  me  the  poem,* 
and  taught  me,  what  1  might  have  known,  had  1 
enough  watched  his  own  life,  that  it  was  entirely 
literal.  There  is  nothing  of  so  high  reach  distinctly 
demonstrable  in  Friedrich :  but  I  see  more  and  more, 
as  I  grow  older,  that  the  things  which  are  the  most 
worth,  encumbered  among  the  errors  and  faults  of 
every  man's  nature,  are  never  clearly  demonstrable ; 
and  are  often  most  forcible  when  they  are  scarcely 
distinct  to  his  own  conscience, — how  much  less, 
clamorous  for  recognition  by  others  ! 

Nothing  can  be  more  beautiful  than  Carlyle's  show- 
ing of  this,  to  any  careful  reader  of  Friedrich.  But 
careful  readers  are  but  one  in  the  thousand ;  and  by 
the  careless,  the  masses  of  detail  with  which  the 
historian  must  deal  are  insurmountable. 

*  The  late  Sir  Herbert  Edwardes. 


l62  APPENDIX. 

My  own  notes,  made  for  the  special  purpose  of 
hunting  down  the  one  point  of  economy,  though 
they  cruelly  spoil  Carlyle's  own  current  and  method 
of  thought,  may  yet  be  useful  in  enabling  readers, 
unaccustomed  to  books  involving  so  vast  a  range  of 
conception,  to  discern  what,  on  this  one  subject 
only,  may  be  gathered  from  that  history.  On  any 
other  subject  of  importance,  similar  gatherings  might 
be  made  of  other  passages.  The  historian  has  to 
deal  with  all  at  once. 

1  therefore  have  determined  to  print  here,  as  a 
sequel  to  the  Essay  on  War,  my  notes  from  the  first 
volume  of  Friedrich,  on  the  economies  of  Branden- 
burg, up  to  the  date  of  the  establishment  of  the 
Prussian  monarchy.  The  economies  of  the  first 
three  Kings  of  Prussia  I  shall  then  take  up  in  Fors 
Clavigera,  finding  them  fitter  for  examination  in 
connection  with  the  subject  of  that  book  than  of 
this. 

I  assume,  that  the  reader  will  take  down  his  first 
volume  of  Carlyle,  and  read  attentively  the  passages 
to  which  I  refer  him.  1  give  the  reference  first  to 
the  largest  edition,  in  six  volumes  (1858-1865)  ;  then, 
in  parenthesis,  to  the  smallest  or  "people's  edition" 
(1872-1873).  The  pieces  which  I  have  quoted  in 
my  own  text  are  for  the  use  of  readers  who  may  not 
have  ready  access  to  the  book ;  and  are  enough  for 
the  explanation  of  the  points  to  which  1  wish  them 
to  direct  their  thoughts  in  reading  such  histories 
of  soldiers  or  soldier-kingdoms. 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     163 

I. 

Year  928  to  936.  —  Dawn  of  Order  in   Christian 
Germany. 

Book  II.  Chap.  i.  p.  67  (47). 

Henry  the  Fowler,  "the  beginning  of  German 
kings,"  is  a  mighty  soldier  in  the  cause  of  peace  j  his 
essential  work  the  building  and  organization  of  for- 
tified towns  for  the  protection  of  men. 

Read  page  72  with  utmost  care  (51),  "  He  fortified 
towns,"  to  end  of  small  print.  I  have  added  some 
notes  on  the  matter  in  my  lecture  on  Giovanni  Pisano ; 
but  whether  you  can  glance  at  them  or  not,  fix  in 
your  mind  this  institution  of  truly  civil  or  civic  build- 
ing in  Germany,  as  distinct  from  the  building  of 
baronial  castles  for  the  security  of  robbers :  and  of  a 
standing  army  consisting  of  every  ninth  man,  called 
a  "burgher"  ("townsman") — a  soldier,  appointed 
to  learn  that  profession  that  he  may  guard  the  walls 
—  the  exact  reverse  of  our  notion  of  a  burgher. 

Frederick's  final  idea  of  his  army  is,  indeed,  only 
this. 

Brannibor,  a  chief  fortress  of  the  Wends,  is  thus 
taken,  and  further  strengthened  by  Henry  the  Fowler ; 
wardens  appointed  for  it;  and  thus  the  history  of 
Brandenburg  begins.  On  all  frontiers,  also,  this 
"  beginning  of  German  kings"  has  his  "  Markgraf," 
"  Ancient  of  the  marked  place."  Read  page  73, 
measuredly,  learning  it  by  heart,  if  it  may  be. 
(51-2.) 


164  APPENDIX. 

II. 

936 — 1000.  —  History    of  Nascent    Brandenburg. 

The  passage  I  last  desired  you  to  read  ends  with 
this  sentence:  "The  sea-wall  you  build,  and  what 
main  floodgates  you  establish  in  it,  will  depend  on 
the  state  of  the  outer  sea." 

From  this  time  forward  you  have  to  keep  clearly 
separate  in  your  minds,  (a)  the  history  of  that  outer 
sea,  Pagan  Scandinavia,  Russia,  and  Bor-Russia,  or 
Prussia  proper ;  (b)  the  history  of  Henry  the  Fowler's 
Eastern  and  Western  Marches  ;  asserting  themselves 
gradually  as  Austria  and  the  Netherlands  ;  and  (c)  the 
history  of  this  inconsiderable  fortress  of  Brandenburg, 
gradually  becoming  considerable,  and  the  capital 
city  of  increasing  district  between  them.  That  last 
history,  however,  Carlyle  is  obliged  to  leave  vague 
and  gray  for  two  hundred  years  after  Henry's  death. 
Absolutely  dim  for  the  first  century,  in  which  nothing 
is  evident  but  that  its  wardens  or  Markgraves  had 
no  peaceable  possession  of  the  place.  Read  the 
second  paragraph  in  page  74  (52-3),  "  in  old  books" 
to  "reader,"  and  the  first  in  page  83  (59),  "mean- 
while" to  "  substantial,"  consecutively.  They  bring 
the  story  of  Brandenburg  itself  down,  at  any  rate, 
from  936  to  1000. 

III. 

936 —  1000.  — State  of  the  Outer  Sea. 

Read  now  Chapter  II.  beginning  at  page  76  (54), 
wherein  you  will  get  account  of  the   beginning  of 


POLITICAL  ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     165 

vigorous  missionary  work  on  the  outer  sea,  in  Prus- 
sia proper;  of  the  death  of  St.  Adalbert,  and  of 
the  purchase  of  his  dead  body  by  the  Duke  of 
Poland. 

You  will  not  easily  understand  Carlyle's  laugh  in 
this  chapter,  unless  you  have  learned  yourself  to  laugh 
in  sadness,  and  to  laugh  in  love. 

*'  No  Czech  blows  his  pipe  in  the  woodlands  with- 
out certain  precautions  and  preliminary  fuglings  of  a 
devotional  nature."  (Imagine  St.  Adalbert,  in  spirit, 
at  the  railway  station  in  Birmingham  !) 

My  own  main  point  for  notice  in  the  chapter  is  the 
purchase  of  his  body  for  its  "  weight  in  gold." 
Swindling  angels  held  it  up  in  the  scales  ;  it  did  not 
weigh  so  much  as  a  web  of  gossamer.  "  Had  such 
excellent  odor,  too,  and  came  for  a  mere  nothing  of 
gold,"  says  Carlyle.  It  is  one  of  the  first  commercial 
transactions  of  Germany,  but  I  regret  the  conduct  of 
the  angels  on  the  occasion.  Evangelicalism  has 
been  proud  of  ceasing  to  invest  in  relics,  its  swindling 
angels  helping  it  to  better  things,  as  it  supposes. 
For  my  own  part,  I  believe  Christian  Germany  could 
not  have  bought  at  this  time  any  treasure  more 
precious;  nevertheless,  the  missionary  work  itself  you 
find  is  wholly  vain.  The  difference  of  opinion  be- 
tween St.  Adalbert  and  the  Wends,  on  Divine  mat-^ 
ters,  does  not  signify  to  the  Fates.  They  will  not 
have  it  disputed  about;  and  end  the  dispute  ad- 
versely to  St.  Adalbert, — adversely,  even,  to  Bran- 
denburg and  its  civilizing  power,  as  you  will  im- 
mediately see. 


l66  APPENDIX. 


IV. 

looo —  1030.  — History  of  Brandenburg  in 

Trouble. 

Book  II.  Chap.  iii.  p.  83  (59). 

The  adventures  of  Brandenburg  in  contest  with 
Pagan  Prussia,  irritated,  rather  tlian  amended,  by 
St.  Adalbert.  In  1023,  roughly,  a  hundred  years 
after  Henry  the  Fowler's  death,  Brandenburg  is  taken 
by  the  Wends,  and  its  first  line  of  Markgraves  ended; 
its  population  mostly  butchered,  especially  the  priests  ; 
and  the  Wends'  God,  Triglaph,  "something  like 
three  whales'  cubs  combined  by  boiling,"  set  up  on 
the  top  of  St.  Mary's  Hill. 

Here  is  an  adverse  "  Doctrine  of  the  Trinity" 
which  has  its  supporters!  It  is  wonderful, — this 
Tripod  and  Triglyph,  —  three-footed,  three-cut  faith 
of  the  North  and  South,  the  leaf  of  the  oxalis,  and 
strawberry,  and  clover,  fostering  the  same  in  their 
simple  manner.  I  suppose  it  to  be  the  most  savage 
and  natural  of  notions  about  Deity ;  a  prismatic  idol- 
shape  of  Him,  rude  as  a  triangular  log,  as  a  trefoil 
grass.  I  do  not  find  how  long  Triglaph  held  his 
state  on  St.  Mary's  Hill.  "  For  a  time,"  says  Carlyle, 
♦*  the  priests  all  slain  or  fled,  —  shadowy  Markgraves 
the  like  —  church  and  state  lay  in  ashes,  and  Tri- 
glaph, like  a  triple  porpoise  under  the  influence  of 
laudanum,  stood,  I  know  not  whether  on  his  head  or 
his  tail,  aloft  on  the  Harlungsberg,  as  the  Supreme 
of  this  Universe  for  the  time  being." 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     16;? 

V. 

1030 — 1130.  —  Brandenburg  under  the  Ditmarsch 
Markgraves,  or  Ditmarsch-Stade  Markgraves. 

Book  II.  Chap.  iii.  p.  85  (60). 

Of  Anglish,  or  Saxon  breed.  They  attack  Bran- 
denburg, under  its  Triglyphic  protector,  take  it  — 
dethrone  him,  and  hold  the  town  fon  a  hundred 
years,  their  history  "  stamped  beneficially  on  the  face 
of  things,  Markgraf  after  Markgraf  getting  killed  in 
the  business.  '  Erschlagen,'  '  slain,'  fighting  with 
the  Heathen  —  say  the  old  books,  and  pass  on  to 
another."  If  we  allow  seven  years  to  Triglaph  —  we 
get  a  clear  century  for  these  —  as  above  indicated. 
They  die  out  in  1 130. 

VI. 

1130  —  1 170.  —  Brandenburg  under  Albert  the 
Bear. 

Book  II.  Chap.  iv.  p.  91  (64). 

He  is  the  first  of  the  Ascanien  Markgraves,  whose 
castle  of  Ascanica  is  on  the  northern  slope  of  the 
Hartz  Mountains,  "  ruins  still  dimly  traceable." 

There  had  been  no  soldier  or  king  of  note  among 
the  Ditmarsch  Markgraves,  so  that  you  will  do  well  to 
fix  in  your  mind  successively  the  three  men,  Henry 
the  Fowler,  St.  Adalbert,  and  Albert  the  Bear.  A 
soldier  again,  and  a  strong  one.  Named  the  Bear 
only  from  the  device  on  his  shield,  first  wholly  de- 
finite Markgraf  of  Brandenburg  that  there  is,  "and 


i68  APPENDIX. 

that  the  luckiest  of  events  for  Brandenburg."  Read 
page  93  (66)  carefully,  and  note  this  of  his  econ- 
omies. 

"  Nothing  better  is  known  to  me  of  Albert  the  Bear 
than  his  introducing  large  numbers  of  Dutch  Nether- 
landers  into  those  countries ;  men  thrown  out  of 
work,  who  already  knew  how  to  deal  with  bog  and 
sand,  by  mixing  and  delving,  and  who  first  taught 
Brandenburg  what  greenness  and  cow-pasture  was. 
The  Wends,  in  presence  of  such  things,  could  not 
but  consent  more  and  more  to  efface  themselves  — 
either  to  become  German,  and  grow  milk  and  cheese 
in  the  Dutch  manner,  or  to  disappear  from  the  world. 

"  After  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  barking  and 
worrying,  the  Wends  are  now  finally  reduced  to 
silence ;  their  anarchy  well  buried  and  wholesome 
Dutch  cabbage  planted  over  it ;  Albert  did  several 
great  things  in  the  world ;  but  this,  for  posterity, 
remains  his  memorable  feat.  Not  done  quite  easily, 
but  done :  big  destinies  of  nations  or  of  persons  are 
not  founded  gratis  in  this  world.  He  had  a  sore, 
toilsome  time  of  it,  coercing,  warring,  managing 
among  his  fellow-creatures,  while  his  day's  work 
lasted  —  fifty  years  or  so,  for  it  began  early.  He 
died  in  his  Castle  of  Ballenstadt,  peaceably  among 
the  Hartz  Mountains  at  last,  in  the  year  1170,  age 
about  sixty-five." 

Now,  note  in  all  this  the  steady  gain  of  soldiership 
enforcing  order  and  agriculture,  with  St.  Adalbert 
giving  higher  strain  to  the  imagination.     Henry  the 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     169 

Fowler  establishes  walled  towns,  fighting  for  mere 
peace.  Albert  the  Bear  plants  the  country  with  cab- 
bages, fighting  for  his  cabbage-fields.  And  the  dis- 
ciples of  St.  Adalbert,  generally,  have  succeeded  in 
substituting  some  idea  of  Christ  for  the  idea  of 
Triglaph.  Some  idea  only ;  other  ideas  than  of 
Christ  haunt  even  to  this  day  those  Hartz  Mountains 
among  which  Albert  the  Bear  died  so  peacefully. 
Mephistopheles,  and  all  his  ministers,  inhabit  there, 
commanding  mephitic  clouds  and  earth-born  dreams. 


VII. 

1170 — 1320. — Brandenburg  150  years  under  the 
Ascanien  Markgraves. 

Vol.  I.  Book  II.  Chap.  viii.  p.  135  (96). 

"  Wholesome  Dutch  cabbages  continued  to  be 
more  and  more  planted  by  them  in  the  waste  sand : 
intrusive  chaos,  and  Triglaph  held  at  bay  by  them," 
till  at  last  in  1240,  seventy  years  after  the  great 
Bear's  death,  they  fortify  a  new  Burg,  a  "  little  ram- 
part," Wehrlin,  diminutive  of  Wehr  (or  vallum), 
gradually  smoothing  itself,  with  a  little  echo  of  the 
Bear  in  it  too,  into  Ber-lin,  the  oily  river  Spree  flow- 
ing by,  "in  which  you  catch  various  fish;"  while 
trade  over  the  flats  and  by  the  dull  streams,  is  widely 
possible.  Of  the  Ascanien  race,  the  notablest  is  Otto 
with  the  Arrow,  whose  story  see,  pp.  138-141  (98- 
109),  noting  that  Otto  is  one  of  the  first  Minne- 
singers ;  that,  being  a  prisoner  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Magdeburg,  his  wife  rescues  him,  selling  her  jewels 


170  APPENDIX. 

to  bribe  the  canons ;  and  that  the  Knight,  set  free  on 
parole  and  promise  of  further  ransom,  rides  back 
with  his  own  price  in  his  hand ;  holding  himself 
thereat  cheaply  bought,  though  no  angelic  legerde- 
main happens  to  the  scales  now.  His  own  estimate 
of  his  price  —  "Rain  gold  ducats  on  my  war-horse 
and  me,  till  you  cannot  see  the  point  of  my  spear 
atop." 

Emptiness  of  utter  pride,  you  think  ? 

Not  so.  Consider  with  yourself,  reader,  how  much 
you  dare  to  say,  aloud,  ^<7«  are  worth.  If  you  have 
no  courage  to  name  any  price  whatsoever  for  your- 
self, believe  me,  the  cause  is  not  your  modesty,  but 
that  in  very  truth  you  feel  in  your  heart  there  would 
be  no  bid  for  you  at  Lucian's  sale  erf  lives,  were  that 
again  possible,  at  Christie  and  Manson's. 

Finally  (1319  exactly ;  say  1320,  for  memory),  the 
Ascanien  line  expired  in  Brandenburg,  and  the  little 
town  and  its  electorate  lapsed  to  the  Kaiser :  mean- 
time other  economical  arrangements  had  been  in 
progress ;  but  observe  first  how  far  we  have  got. 

The  Fowler,  St.  Adalbert,  and  the  Bear  have 
established  order,  and  some  sort  of  Christianity ;  but 
the  established  persons  begin  to  think  somewhat  too 
well  of  themselves.  On  quite  honest  terms,  a  dead 
saint  or  a  living  knight  ought  to  be  worth  their  true 
"weight  in  gold."  But  a  pyramid,  with  only  the 
point  of  the  spear  seen  at  top,  would  be  many  times 
over  one's  weight  in  gold.  And  although  men  were 
yet  far  enough  from  the  notion  of  modern  days,  that 
the  gold  is  better  than  the  flesh,  and  from  buying  it 
with  the  clay  of  one's  body,  and  even  the  fire  of  one's 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     17 1 

soul,  instead  of  soul  and  body  with  it,  they  were 
beginning  to  fight  for  their  own  supremacy,  or  for 
their  own  religious  fancies,  and  not  at  all  to  any  use- 
ful end,  until  an  entirely  unexpected  movement  is 
made  in  the  old  useful  direction  forsooth,  only  by 
some  kind  ship-captains  of  Lubeck ! 


VIII. 

1210  —  1320.  —  Civil  work,  aiding  military,  during 
the  Ascanien  period. 

Vol.  I.  Book  11.  Chap.  vi.  p.  109  (77). 

In  the  year  1190,  Acre  not  yet  taken,  and  the 
crusading  army  wasting  by  murrain  on  the  shore,  the 
German  soldiers  especially  having  none  to  look  after 
them,  certain  compassionate  ship-captains  of  Lubeck, 
one  Walpot  von  Bassenheim  taking  the  lead,  formed 
themselves  into  an  union  for  succor  of  the  sick  and 
the  dying,  set  up  canvas  tents  from  the  Liibeck  ship 
stores,  and  did  what  utmost  was  in  them  silently  in 
the  name  of  mercy  and  heaven.  Finding  its  work 
prosper,  the  little  medicinal  and  weather-fending 
company  took  vows  on  itself,  strict  chivalry  forms, 
and  decided  to  become  permanent  "Knights  Hospi- 
tallers of  our  dear  Lady  of  Mount  Zion,"  separate 
from  the  former  Knights  Hospitallers,  as  being 
entirely  German :  yet  soon,  as  the  German  Order  of 
St.  Mary,  eclipsing  in  importance  Templars,  Hos- 
pitallers, and  every  other  chivalric  order  then  extant ; 
no  purpose  of  battle  in  them,  but  much  strength  for 
"t;    their  purpose  only  the  helping  of  German  pil- 


l^^  APPENDIX. 

grims.  To  this  only  they  are  bound  by  their  vow, 
"  geliibde,"  and  become  one  of  the  usefullest  of  clubs 
in  all  the  Pall  Mall  of  Europe. 

Finding  pilgrimage  in  Palestine  falling  slack,  and 
more  need  for  them  on  the  homeward  side  of  the  sea, 
their  Hochmeister,  Hermann  of  the  Salza,  goes  over 
to  Venice  in  1210.  There,  the  titular  bishop  of  still 
unconverted  Preussen  advises  him  of  that  field  of 
work  for  his  idle  knights.  Hermann  thinks  well  of 
it :  sets  his  St.  Mary's  riders  at  Triglaph,  with  the 
sword  in  one  hand  and  a  missal  in  the  other. 

Not  your  modern  way  of  effecting  conversion  !  Too 
illiberal,  you  think  ;  and  what  would  Mr.  J .  S.  Mill  say  ? 

But  if  Triglaph  had  been  verily  "three  whales' 
cubs  combined  by  boiling,"  you  would  yourself  have 
promoted  attack  on  him  for  the  sake  of  his  oil,  would 
not  you?  The  Teutsch  Ritters,  fighting  him  for 
charity,  are  they  so  much  inferior  to  you? 

"They  built,  and  burnt,  innumerable  stockades  for 
and  against ;  built  wooden  forts  which  are  now  stone 
towns.  They  fought  much  and  prevalently ;  galloped 
desperately  to  and  fro,  ever  on  the  alert.  In  peace- 
abler  ulterior  times,  they  fenced  in  the  Nogat  and  the 
Weichsel  with  dams,  whereby  unlimited  quagmire 
might  become  grassy  meadow  —  as  it  continues  to 
this  day.  Marienburg  (Mary's  Burg),  with  its  grand 
stone  Schloss  still  visible  and  even  habitable :  this 
was  at  length  their  headquarter.  But  how  many 
Burgs  of  wood  and  stone  they  built,  in  different 
parts ;  what  revolts,  surprisals,  furious  fights  in 
woody,  boggy  places  they  had,  no  man  has  counted. 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     173 

"  But  always  some  preaching  by  zealous  monks, 
accompanied  the  chivalrous  fighting.  And  colonists 
came  in  from  Germany ;  trickling  in,  or  at  times 
streaming.  Victorious  Ritterdom  ofifers  terms  to  the 
beaten  heathen :  terms  not  of  tolerant  nature,  but 
which  will  be  punctually  kept  by  Ritterdom.  When 
the  flame  of  revolt  or  general  conspiracy  burnt  up 
again  too  extensively,  high  personages  came  on 
crusade  to  them.  Ottocar,  King  of  Bohemia,  with 
his  extensive  far-shining  chivalry,  'conquered  Sam- 
land  in  a  month ; '  tore  up  the  Romova  where  Adal- 
bert had  been  massacred,  and  burnt  it  from  the  face 
of  the  earth.  A  certain  fortress  was  founded  at  that 
time,  in  Ottocar's  presence ;  and  in  honor  of  him 
they  named  it  King's  Fortress,  '  Konigsberg.'  Among 
King  Ottocar's  esquires,  or  subaltern  junior  officials, 
on  this  occasion,  is  one  Rudolf,  heir  of  a  poor  Swiss 
lordship  and  gray  hill  castle,  called  Hapsburg,  rather 
in  reduced  circumstances,  whom  Ottocar  likes  for  his 
prudent,  hardy  ways ;  a  stout,  modest,  wise  young 
man,  who  may  chance  to  redeem  Hapsburg  a  little,  if 
he  lives. 

"  Conversion,  and  complete  conquest  once  come, 
there  was  a  happy  time  for  Prussia ;  ploughshare  in- 
stead of  sword  :  busy  sea-havens,  German  towns,  get- 
ting built;  churches  everywhere  rising ;  grass  growing, 
and  peaceable  cows,  where  formerly  had  been  quagmire 
and  snakes,  and  for  the  Order  a  happy  time.  On  the 
whole,  this  Teutsch  Ritterdom,  for  the  first  century 
and  more,  was  a  grand  phenomenon,  and  flamed  like 
a  bright  blessed  beacon  through  the  night  of  things, 
in  those  Northern  countries.     For  above  a  century, 


174  APPENDIX. 

we  perceive,  it  was  the  rallying  place  of  all  brave  men 
who  had  a  career  to  seek  on  terms  other  than  vulgar. 
The  noble  soul,  aiming  beyond  money,  and  sensible 
to  more  than  hunger  in  this  world,  had  a  beacon 
burning  (as  we  say),  if  the  night  chanced  to  over- 
take it,  and  the  earth  to  grow  too  intricate,  as  is  not 
uncommon.  Better  than  the  career  of  stump-oratory, 
I  should  fency,  and  its  Hesperides  apples,  golden, 
and  of  gilt  horse-dung.  Better  than  puddling  away 
one's  poor  spiritual  gift  of  God  (loan,  not  gift),  such 
as  it  may  be,  in  building  the  lofty  rhyme,  the  lofty 
review  article,  for  a  discerning  public  that  has  six- 
pence to  spare  !    Times  alter  greatly."  * 

We  must  pause  here  again  for  a  moment  to  think 
where  we  are,  and  who  is  with  us.  The  Teutsch 
Ritters  have  been  fighting,  independently  of  all 
states,  for  their  own  hand,  or  St.  Adalbert's ;  — 
partly  for  mere  love  of  fight,  partly  for  love  of  order, 
partly  for  love  of  God.  Meantime,  other  Riders 
have  been  fighting  wholly  for  what  they  could  get  by 
it;  and  other  persons,  not  Riders,  have  not  been 
fighting  at  all,  but  in  their  own  towns  peacefully 
manufacturing  and  selling. 

Of  Henry  the  Fowler's  Marches,  Austria  has  be- 
come a  military  power,  Flanders  a  mercantile  one, 
pious  only  in  the  degree  consistent  with  their  several 
occupations.  Prussia  is  now  a  practical  and  farming 
country,  more  Christian  than  its  longer-converted 
neighbors. 

*  I  would  much  rather  print  these  passages  of  Carlyle  in  large 
golden  letters  than  small  black  ones ;  but  they  are  only  here  at  all  io( 
nnlucky  people  who  can't  read  them  with  the  context 


POLITICAL  ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     175 

"  Towns  are  built,  Konigsberg  (King  Ottocar's 
town),  Thoren  (Tiiorn,  City  of  the  Gates),  with 
many  others ;  so  that  the  wild  population  and  the 
tame  now  lived  tolerably  together,  under  Gospel  and 
Liibeck  law  ;  and  all  was  ploughing  and  trading." 

But  Brandenburg  itself,  what  of  it? 

The  Ascanien  Markgraves  rule  it  on  the  whole 
prosperously  down  to  1320,  when  their  line  expires, 
and  it  falls  into  the  power  of  Imperial  Austria. 

IX. 

1320 — 1415- — Brandenburg  under  the  Austrians. 

A  CENTURY  —  the  fourteenth  —  of  miserable  anar- 
chy and  decline  for  Brandenburg,  its  Kurfiirsts,  in 
deadly  succession,  making  what  they  can  out  of  it 
for  their  own  pockets.  The  city  itself  and  its  terri- 
tory utterly  helpless.  Read  pp.  180,  181  (129,  130). 
"The  towns  suffered  much,  any  trade  they  might 
have  had  going  to  wreck.  Robber  castles  flourished, 
all  else  decayed,  no  highway  safe.  What  are  Ham- 
burg pedlers  made  for  but  to  be  robbed?" 

X. 

141 5  -—  1440.  —  Brandenburg  under   Friedrich  of 

Nuremberg. 

This  is  the  fourth  of  the  men  whom  you  are  to 
remember  as  creators  of  the  Prussian  monarchy, 
Henry  the  Fowler,  St.  Adalbert,  Albert  the  Bear,  of 
Ascanien,  and  Friedrich  of  Niiremberg ;  (of  Hohen 


176  APPENDIX. 

zollern  by  name,  and  by  country  of  the  Black 
Forest,  north  of  the  Lake  of  Constance) . 

Brandenburg  is  sold  to  him  at  Constance,  during 
the  great  Council,  for  about  ^200,000  of  our  money, 
worth  perhaps  a  million  in  that  day ;  still,  with  its 
capabilities,  "  dog  cheap."  Admitting,  what  no  one 
at  the  time  denied,  the  general  marketableness  of 
states  as  private  property,  this  is  the  one  practical 
result,  thinks  Carlyle  (not  likely  to  think  wrong) ,  of 
that  oecumenical  deliberation,  four  years  long,  of  the 
"elixir  of  the  intellect  and  dignity  of  Europe.  And 
that  one  thing  was  not  its  doing ;  but  a  pawnbroking 
job,  intercalated,"  putting,  however,  at  last,  Branden- 
burg again  under  the  will  of  one  strong  man.  On 
St.  John's  Day,  141 2,  he  first  set  foot  in  his  town, 
"  and  Brandenburg,  under  its  wise  Kurfiirst,  begins 
to  be  cosmic  again."  The  story  of  Heavy  Peg,  pages 
195-198  (138,  140),  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and 
important  passages  of  the  first  volume ;  page  199, 
specially  to  our  purpose,  must  be  given  entire :  — 

"  The  offer  to  be  Kaiser  was  made  him  in  his  old 
days ;  but  he  wisely  declined  that  too.  It  was  in 
Brandenburg,  by  what  he  silently  founded  there,  that 
he  did  his  chief  benefit  to  Germany  and  mankind. 
He  understood  the  noble  art  of  governing  men ;  had 
in  him  the  justness,  clearness,  valor,  and  patience 
needed  for  that.  A  man  of  sterling  probity,  for  one 
thing.  Which  indeed  is  the  first  requisite  in  said 
art :  —  if  you  will  have  your  laws  obeyed  without 
mutiny,  see  well  that  they  be  pieces  of  God 
Almighty's  law ;  otherwise  all  the  artillery  in  the 
world  will  not  keep  down  mutiny. 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     1 77 

"  Friedrich  '  travelled  much  over  Brandenburg ; ' 
looking  into  everything  with  his  own  eyes  ;  making,  I 
can  well  fancy,  innumerable  crooked  things  straight ; 
reducing  more  and  more  that  famishing  dog-kennel 
of  a  Brandenburg  into  a  fruitful  arable  field.  His 
portraits  represent  a  square-headed,  mild-looking, 
solid  gentleman,  with  a  certain  twinkle  of  mirth  in 
the  serious  eyes  of  him.  Except  in  those  Hussite 
wars  for  Kaiser  Sigismund  and  the  Reich,  in  which 
no  man  could  prosper,  he  may  be  defined  as  con- 
stantly prosperous.  To  Brandenburg  he  was,  very 
literally,  the  blessing  of  blessings ;  redemption  out 
of  death  into  life.  In  the  ruins  of  that  old  Friesack 
Castle,  battered  down  by  Heavy  Peg,  antiquarian 
science  (if  it  had  any  eyes)  might  look  for  the  tap- 
root of  the  Prussian  nation,  and  the  beginning  of  all 
that  Brandenburg  has  since  grown  to  under  the  sun." 

Which  growth  is  now  traced  by  Carlyle  in  its  vari- 
ous budding  and  withering,  under  the  succession  of 
the  twelve  Electors,  of  whom  Friedrich,  with  his 
Heavy  Peg,  is  first,  and  Friedrich,  first  King  of 
Prussia,  grandfather  of  Friedrich  the  Great,  the 
twelfth. 

XI. 

141 5 — 1701 .  —  Brandenburg  under  the  Hohenxollern 
Kurfiirsts. 

Book  III. 
Who  the  Hohenzollerns  were,  and  how  they  came 
to    power    in    Nuremberg,  is   told  in  Chap.  v.  of 
Book  II. 


178 


APPENDIX. 


Their  succession  in  Brandenburg  is  given  in  brief  at 
page  377  (269).  I  copy  it,  in  absolute  barrenness  of 
enumeration,  for  our  momentary  convenience,  here :  — 


Friedrich  ist  of  Brandenburg  (6th  of 
Nuremberg)     .... 

Friedrich  II.,  called  "  Iron  Teeth  " 

Albert 

Johann        

Joachim  I 

Joachim  II.         .... 

Johann  George 

Joachim  Friedrich 

Johann  Sigismund 

George  Wilhelm    .     . 

Friedrich  Wilhelm  (the  Great  Elector) 

Friedrich,  first  King;  crowned  i8th  Jan- 
uary       .         .        .        .        . 


1412-1440 

1440-1472 
1472-1486 
1 486- 1 499 
1499-1535 
1535-1571 
1571-1598 
1 598-1608 
1608-1619 
1619-1640 
1640-1688 

1701 


Of  this  line  of  princes  we  have  to  say  they  fol- 
lowed generally  in  their  ancestor's  steps,  and  had 
success  of  the  like  kind  more  or  less  ;  HohenzoUerns 
all  of  them,  by  character  and  behavior  as  well  as  by 
descent.  No  lack  of  quiet  energy,  of  thrift,  sound 
sense.  There  was  likewise  solid  fair-play  in  general, 
no  founding  of  yourself  on  ground  that  will  not  carry, 
and  there  was  instant,  gentle,  but  inexorable  crushing 
of  mutiny,  if  it  showed  itself,  which,  after  the  Second 
Elector,  or  at  most  the  Third,  it  had  altogether 
ceased  to  do. 

This  is  the  general  account  of  them;  of  special 
matters  note  the  following :  — 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     179 

II.  Friedrich,  called  "  Iron-teeth,"  from  his  firm- 
ness, proves  a  notable  manager  and  governor.  Builds 
the  palace  at  Berlin  in  its  first  form,  and  makes  it  his 
chief  residence.  Buys  Neumark  from  the  fallen 
Teutsch  Ritters,  and  generally  establishes  things  on 
securer  footing. 

III.  Albert,  "a  fiery,  tough  old  Gentleman," 
called  the  Achilles  of  Germany  in  his  day ;  has  half- 
a-century  of  fighting  with  his  own  Nurembergers, 
with  Bavaria,  France,  Burgundy  and  its  fiery  Charles, 
besides  being  head  constable  to  the  Kaiser  among 
any  disorderly  persons  in  the  East.  His  skull,  long 
shown  on  his  tomb,  "marvellous  for  strength  and 
with  no  visible  sutures." 

IV.  John,  the  orator  of  his  race  ;  (but  the  orations 
unrecorded).  His  second  son.  Archbishop  of  Maintz, 
for  whose  piece  of  memorable  work  see  page  223 
(143),  and  read  in  connection  with  that  the  history 
of  Markgraf  George,  pp.  237 — 241  (152 — 154),  and 
the  8th  chapter  of  the  third  book. 

V.  Joachim  I.,  of  little  note;  thinks  there  has 
been  enough  Reformation,  and  checks  proceedings 
in  a  dull  stubbornness,  causing  him  at  least  grave 
domestic  difficulties.  —  Page  271  (173). 

VI.  Joachim  II.  Again  active  in  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  staunch, 

"though  generally  in  a  cautious,  weighty,  never  in  a 
rash,  swift  way,  to  the  great  cause  of  Protestantism 
and  to  all  good  causes.  He  was  himself  a  solemnly 
devout  man ;  deep,  awe-stricken  reverence  dwelling 
in  his  view  of  this  universe.     Most  serious,  though 


l8o  APPENDIX. 

with  a  jocose  dialect,  commonly  having  a  cheerful 
wit  in  speaking  to  men.  Luther's  books  he  called  his 
Seelenschatz  (souPs  treasure)  ;  Luther  and  the  Bible 
were  his  chief  reading.  Fond  of  profane  learning, 
too,  and  of  the  useful  or  ornamental  arts ;  given  to 
music,  and  '  would  himself  sing  aloud '  when  he  had 
a  melodious  leisure  hour." 

VI L  Johann  George,  a  prudent  thrifty  Herr ;  no 
mistresses,  no  luxuries  allowed ;  at  the  sight  of  a 
new-fashioned  coat  he  would  fly  out  on  an  unhappy 
youth  and  pack  him  from  his  presence.  Very  strict 
in  p>oint  of  justice  ;  a  peasant  once  appealing  to  him 
in  one  of  his  inspection  journeys  through  the  coun- 
try- 

"  •  Grant  me  justice,  Durchlaucht,  against  so  and 
so;  I  am  your  Highness's  born  subject.'  —  'Thou 
shouldst  have  it,  man,  wert  thou  a  born  Turk ! ' 
answered  Johann  George." 

Thus,  generally,  we  find  this  line  of  Electors 
representing  in  Europe  the  Puritan  mind  of  Eng- 
land in  a  somewhat  duller,  but  less  dangerous,  form ; 
receiving  what  Protestantism  could  teach  of  honesty 
and  common  sense,  but  not  its  anti-Catholic  fury,  or 
its  selfish  spiritual  anxiety.  Pardon  of  sins  is  not  to 
be  had  from  Tetzel ;  neither,  the  Hohenzollern  mind 
advises  with  itself,  from  even  Tetzel's  master,  for 
either  the  buying,  or  the  asking.  On  the  whole, 
we  had  better  commit  as  few  as  possible,  and  live 
just  lives  and  plain  ones. 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     l8l 

*•  A  conspicuous  thrift,  veracity,  modest  solidity, 
looks  through  the  conduct  of  this  Herr ;  a  deter- 
mined Protestant  he  too,  as  indeed  all  the  following 
were  and  are." 

VIII.  Joachim  Friedrich.  Gets  hold  of  Prussia, 
which  hitherto,  you  observe,  has  always  been  spoken 
of  as  a  separate  country  from  Brandenburg.  March 
II,  1605  —  "  Squeezed  his  way  into  the  actual  guard- 
ianship of  Preussen  and  its  imbecile  Duke,  which  was 
his  by  right." 

For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  trouble  myself  much 
about  these  rights,  never  being  able  to  make  out  any 
single  one,  to  begin  with,  except  the  right  to  keep 
everything  and  every  place  about  you  in  as  good 
order  as  you  can  —  Prussia,  Poland,  or  what  else.  I 
should  much  like,  for  instance,  just  now,  to  hear  of 
any  honest  Cornish  gentleman  of  the  old  Drake 
breed  taking  a  fancy  to  land  in  Spain,  and  trying 
what  he  could  make  of  his  rights  as  far  round  Gib- 
raltar as  he  could  enforce  them.  At  all  events, 
Master  Joachim  has  somehow  got  hold  of  Prussia; 
and  means  to  keep  it. 

IX.  Johann  Sigismund.  Only  notable  for  our 
economical  purposes,  as  getting  the  "guardianship" 
of  Prussia  conlirmed  to  him.  The  story  at  page  317 
(226),  "  a  strong  flame  of  choler,"  indicates  a  new 
order  of  things  among  the  knights  of  Europe  — 
"  princely  etiquettes  melting  all  into  smoke."  Too 
literally  so,  that  being  one  of  the  calamitous  functions 
of  the  plain  lives  we  are  living,  and  of  the  busy  life 
our  country  is  living.     In  the  Duchy  of  Cleve,  espe 


l8a  APPENDIX. 

daily,  concerning  which  legal  dispute  begins  in  Sigis- 
mund's  time.  And  it  is  well  worth  the  lawyers' 
trouble,  it  seems. 

•'  It  amounted,  perhaps,  to  two  Yorkshires  in  ex- 
tent. A  naturally  opulent  country  of  fertile  meadows, 
shipping  capabilities,  metalliferous  hills,  and  at  this 
time,  in  consequence  of  the  Dutch-Spanish  war,  and 
the  multitude  of  Protestant  refugees,  it  was  getting 
filled  with  ingenious  industries,  and  rising  to  be  what 
it  still  is,  the  busiest  quarter  of  Germany.  A  country 
lowing  with  kine  ;  the  hum  of  the  flax-spindle  heard 
in  its  cottages  in  those  old  days  —  'much  of  the 
■  linen  called  Hollands  is  made  in  Jiilich,  and  only 
bleached,  stamped,  and  sold  by  the  Dutch,'  says 
Biisching.  A  country  in  our  days  which  is  shrouded 
at  short  intervals  with  the  due  canopy  of  coal-smoke, 
and  loud  with  sounds  of  the  anvil  and  the  loom." 

The  lawyers  took  two  hundred  and  six  years  to 
settle  the  question  concerning  this  Duchy,  and  the 
thing  Johann  Sigismund  had  claimed  legally  in  1609 
was  actually  handed  over  to  Johann  Sigismund's  de- 
scendant in  the  seventh  generation.  "These  liti- 
gated duchies  are  now  the  Prussian  provinces,  Jiilich, 
Berg,  Cleve,  and  the  nucleus  of  Prussia's  possessions 
in  the  Rhine  country." 

X.  George  Wilhelm.  Read  pp.  325  to  327  (231, 
333)  on  this  Elector  and  German  Protestanism,  now 
feUen  cold,  and  somewhat  too  little  dangerous.  But 
George  Wilhelm  is  the  only  weak  prince  of  all  the 
twelve.    For  another  example  how  the  heart  and  life 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.    185 

of  a  country  depend  upon  its  prince,  not  on  its  coun- 
cil, read  this,  of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  demanding  the 
cession  of  Spandau  and  Kustrin : 

"  Which  cession  Kiirfurst  George  Wilhelm,  though 
giving  all  his  prayers  to  the  good  cause,  could  by  no 
means  grant.  Gustav  had  to  insist,  with  more  and 
more  emphasis,  advancing  at  last  with  military  men- 
ace upon  Berlin  itself.  He  was  met  by  George  Wil- 
helm and  his  Council,  '  in  the  woods  of  Copenick,' 
short  way  to  the  east  of  that  city ;  there  George  Wil- 
helm and  his  Council  wandered  about,  sending 
messages,  hopelessly  consulting,  saying  among  each 
other,  'Que  faire?  ils  ont  des  canons.'  For  many 
hours  so,  round  the  inflexible  Gustav,  who  was  there 
Hke  a  fixed  milestone,  and  to  all  questions  and 
comers  had  only  one  answer." 

On  our  special   question  of  war  and  its  conse- 
quences, read  this  of  the  Thirty  Years'  one : 

"  But  on  the  whole,  the  grand  weapon  in  it,  and 
towards  the  latter  times  the  exclusive  one,  was 
hunger.  The  opposing  armies  tried  to  starve  one 
another;  at  lowest,  tried  each  not  to  starve.  Each 
trying  to  eat  the  country  or,  at  any  rate,  to  leave 
nothing  eatable  in  it;  what  that  will  mean  for  the 
country  we  may  consider.  As  the  armies  too  fre 
quently,  and  the  Kaiser's  armies  habitually,  lived 
without  commissariat,  often  enough  without  pay,  all 
horrors  of  war  and  of  being  a  seat  of  war,  that  have 
been  since  heard  of,  are  poor  to  those  then  practised, 


j84  appendix 

ihe  detail  of  which  is  still  horrible  to  read  Germany, 
in  all  eatable  quarters  of  it,  had  to  undergo  the  pro- 
cess ;  tortured,  torn  to  pieces,  wrecked,  and  brayed 
as  in  mortar,  under  the  iron  mace  of  war.  Branden- 
burg saw  its  towns  seized  and  sacked,  its  couhtry 
populations  driven  to  despair  by  the  one  party  and 
the  other.  Three  times  —  first  in  the  Wallenstein- 
Mecklenburg  times,  while  fire  and  sword  were  the 
weapons,  and  again,  twice  over,  in  the  ultimate  stages 
of  the  struggle,  when  starvation  had  become  the 
method  —  Brandenburg  fell  to  be  the  principal  theatre 
of  conflict,  where  all  forms  of  the  dismal  were  at 
their  height.  In  1638,  three  years  after  that  precious 
♦  Peace  of  Prag,'  .  .  .  the  ravages  of  the  starving 
Gallas  and  his  Imperialists  excelled  all  precedent, 
.  .  .  men  ate  human  flesh,  nay,  human  creatures  ate 
their  own  children.'  '  Que  faire  ?  ils  ont  des 
canons ! ' " 

"We  have  now  arrived  at  the  lowest  nadir  point" 
(says  Carlyle)  "of  the  history  of  Brandenburg  under 
the  HohenzoUerns."  Is  this  then  all  that  Heavy  Peg 
and  our  nine  Kiirfursts  have  done  for  us? 

Carlyle  does  not  mean  that :  but  even  he,  greatest 
of  historians  since  Tacitus,  is  not  enough  carefiil  to 
mark  for  us  the  growth  of  national  character,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  prosperity  of  dynasties. 
-^  A  republican  historian  would  think  of  this  develop- 
ment only,  and  suppose  it  to  be  possible  without  any 
dynasties. 

Which  is  indeed  in  a  measure  so,  and  the  work 
now  chiefly  needed  in  moral  philosophy,  as  well  as 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     185 

Tiistory,  is  an  analysis  of  the  constant  and  prevalent, 
yet  unthought  of,  influences,  which,  without  any  ex- 
.ternal  help  from  kings,  and  in  a  silent  and  entirely 
necessary  manner,  form,  in  Sweden,  in  Bavaria,  in 
the  Tyrol,  in  the  Scottish  border,  and  on  the  French 
seacoast,  races  of  noble  peasants ;  pacific,  poetic, 
heroic,  Christian-hearted  in  the  deepest  sense,  who 
may  indeed  perish  by  sword  or  famine  in  any  cruel 
thirty  years'  war,  or  ignoble  thirty  years'  peace,  and 
yet  leave  such  strength  to  their  children  that  the 
country,  apparently  ravaged  into  hopeless  ruin,  re- 
vives, under  any  prudent  king,  as  the  cultivated  fields 
do  under  the  spring  rain.  How  the  rock  to  which 
no  seed  can  cling,  and  which  no  rain  can  soften,  is 
subdued  into  the  good  ground  which  can  bring  forth 
its  hundredfold,  we  forget  to  watch,  while  we  follow 
the  footsteps  of  the  sower,  or  mourn  the  catastrophes 
of  storm.  All  this  while,  the  Prussian  earth, — 
the  Prussian  soul, —  has  been  thus  dealt  upon  by  suc- 
cessive fate ;  and  now,  though  laid,  as  it  seems, 
utterly  desolate,  it  can  be  revived  by  a  few  years  of 
wisdom  and  of  peace. 

Vol.  I.  Book  III.  Chap,  xviii.— The  Great  Elector, 
Friedrich  Wilhelm.     Eleventh  of  the  dynasty :  — 

"  There  hardly  ever  came  to  sovereign  power  a 
young  man  of  twenty  under  more  distressing,  hope- 
less-looking circumstances.  Political  significance 
Brandenburg  had  none ;  a  mere  Protestant  append- 
age, dragged  about  by  a  Papist  Kaiser,  His  father's 
Prime  Minister,  as  we  have  seen,  was  in  the  interest 
of  his   enemies ;    not    Brandenburg's    servant,    but 


1 86  APPENDIX. 

Austria's.  The  very  commandants  of  his  fortresses 
Commandant  of  Spandau  more  especially,  refused  to 
obey  Friedrich  Wilhelm  on  his  accession ;  *  were 
bound  to  obey  the  Kaiser  in  the  first  place.' 

"  For  twenty  years  past  Brandenburg  had  been 
scoured  by  hostile  armies,  which,  especially  the 
Kaiser's  part  of  which,  committed  outrages  new  in 
human  history.  In  a  year  or  two  hence,  Branden- 
burg became  again  the  theatre  of  business.  Austrian 
Gallas  advancing  thither  again  (1644)  with  intent 
•  to  shut  up  Torstenson  and  his  Swedes  in  Jutland.' 
Gallas  could  by  no  means  do  what  he  intended ;  on 
the  contrary,  he  had  to  run  from  Torstenson  —  what 
feet  could  do ;  was  hunted,  he  and  his  Merode  Briider 
(beautiful  inventors  of  the  '  marauding '  art) ,  till 
they  pretty  much  all  died  (crepirten)  says  Kohler. 
No  great  loss  to  society,  the  death  of  these  artists, 
but  we  can  fancy  what  their  life,  and  especially  what 
the  process  of  their  dying,  may  have  cost  poor  Bran- 
denburg again ! 

"  Friedrich  Wilhelm's  aim,  in  this  as  in  other  emer- 
gencies, was  sun-clear  to  himself,  but  for  most  part 
dim  to  everybody  else.  He  had  to  walk  very  warily, 
Sweden  on  one  hand  of  him,  suspicious  Kaiser  on 
the  other :  he  had  to  wear  semblances,  to  be  ready 
with  evasive  words,  and  advance  noiselessly  by  many 
circuits.  More  delicate  operation  could  not  be  im- 
agined. But  advance  he  did;  advance  and  arrive. 
With  extraordinary  talent,  diligence,  and  felicity  the 
young  man  wound  himself  out  of  this  first  fatal 
position,  got  those  foreign  armies  pushed  out  of  hi« 
country,  and  kept  them  out.    His  first  concern  had 


POLITICAL   ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.    187 

been  to  find  some  vestige  of  revenue,  to  put  that 
upon  a  clear  footing,  and  by  loans  or  otherwise  to 
scrape  a  little  ready-money  together.  On  the  strength 
of  which  a  small  body  of  soldiers  could  be  collected 
about  him,  and  drilled  into  real  ability  to  fight  and 
obey.  This  as  a  basis :  on  this  followed  all  manner 
of  things,  freedom  from  Swedish-Austrian  invasions, 
as  the  first  thing.  He  was  himself,  as  appeared  by- 
and-by,  a  fighter  of  the  first  quality,  when  it  came 
to  that ;  but  never  was  willing  to  fight  if  he  could 
help  it.  Preferred  rather  to  shift,  manoeuvre,  and 
negotiate,  which  he  did  in  most  vigilant,  adroit,  and 
masterly  manner.  But  by  degrees  he  had  grown 
to  have,  and  could  maintain  it,  an  army  of  24,000 
men,  among  the  best  troops  then  in  being." 

To  wear  semblances,  to  be  ready  with  evasive 
words,  how  is  this,  Mr.  Carlyle?  thinks  perhaps,  the 
rightly  thoughtful  reader. 

Yes,  such  things  have  to  be.  There  are  lies  and 
lies,  and  there  are  truths  and  truths.  Ulysses  can- 
not ride  on  the  ram's  back,  like  Phryxus ;  but  must 
ride  under  his  belly.  Read  also  this,  presently  fol- 
lowing : 

"  Shortly  after  which,  Friedrich  Wilhelm,  who  had 
shone  much  in  the  battle  of  Warsaw,  into  which  he 
was  dragged  against  his  will,  changed  sides.  An 
inconsistent,  treacherous  man?  Perhaps  not,  O 
reader!  perhaps  a  many  advancing  "  in  circuits,"  the 
only  way  he  has ;  spirally,  face  now  to  east,  now  to 
west,  with  his  own  reasonable  private  aim  sun-clear 
to  him  all  the  while  ?  " 


iJ*8  APPENDIX. 

The  battle  of  Warsaw,  three  days  long,  fought 
with  Gustavus,  the  grandfather  of  Charles  XII., 
against  the  Poles,  virtually  ends  the  Polish  power: 

"  Old  Johann  Casimir,  not  long  after  that  peace 
of  Oliva,  getting  tired  of  his  unruly  Polish  chivalry 
and  their  ways,  abdicated  —  retired  to  Paris,  and 
•lived  much  with  Ninon  de  TEnclos  and  her  circle," 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  used  to  complain  of  his 
Polish  chivalry,  that  there  was  no  solidity  in  them ; 
nothing  but  outside  glitter,  with  tumult  and  anarchic 
noise  ;  fatal  want  of  one  essential  talent,  the  talent  of 
obeying',  and  has  been  heard  to  prophesy  that  a 
glorious  Republic,  persisting  in  such  courses,  would 
arrive  at  results  which  would  surprise  it. 

"  Onward  from  this  time,  Friedrich  Wilhelm  figures 
in  the  world ;  public  men  watching  his  procedure ; 
kings  anxious  to  secure  him  —  Dutch  print-sellers 
sticking  up  hi?  portraits  for  a  hero-worshipping 
public.  Fighting  hero,  had  the  public  known  it, 
was  not  his  essential  character,  though  he  had  to 
fight  a  great  deal.  He  was  essentially  an  industrial 
man  ;  great  in  organizing,  regulating,  in  constraining 
chaotic  heaps  to  become  cosmic  for  him.  He  drains 
bogs,  settles  colonies  in  the  waste  places  of  his 
dominions,  cuts  canals  ;  unweariedly  encourages  trade 
and  work.  The  Friedrich  Wilhelm's  Canal,  which 
still  carries  tonnage  from  the  Oder  to  the  Spree,  is  a 
monument  of  his  zeal  in  this  way ;  creditable  with  the 
means  he  had.  To  the  poor  French  Protestants  in 
the  Edict-of-Nantes  affair,  he  was  like  an  express 
benefit  of  Heaven ;   one  helper  appointed  to  whom 


POLITICAL  ECONOMY  OF  PRUSSIA.     189 

ihe  help  itself  was  profitable.  He  munificently  wel- 
comed them  to  Brandenburg ;  showed  really  a  noble 
piety  and  human  pity,  as  well  as  judgment ;  nor  did 
Brandenburg  and  he  want  their  reward.  Some 
20,000  nimble  French  souls,  evidently  of  the  best 
French  quality,  found  a  home  there ;  made  '  waste 
sands  about  Berlin  into  potherb  gardens ; '  and  in 
spiritual  Brandenburg,  too,  did  something  of  horti- 
culture which  is  still  noticeable." 

Now  read  carefully  the  description  of  the  man,  p. 
352  (224-5)  ;  the  story  of  the  battle  of  Fehrbellin,  "  the 
Marathon  of  Brandenburg,"  p.  354  (225)  ;  and  of 
the  winter  campaign  of  1679,  p.  356  (227),  beginning 
with  its  week's  marches  at  sixty  miles  a  day ;  his  wife 
as  always,  being  with  him  : 

"  Louisa,  honest  and  loving  Dutch  girl,  aunt  to 
our  William  of  Orange,  who  trimmed  up  her  own 
*  Orange-burg'  (country-house),  twenty  miles  north 
of  Berlin,  into  a  little  jewel  of  the  Dutch  type, 
potherb  gardens,  training-schools  for  young  girls, 
and  the  like,  a  favorite  abode  of  hers  when  she  was 
at  liberty  for  recreation.  But  her  life  was  busy  and 
earnest ;  she  was  helpmate,  not  in  name  only,  to  an 
ever  busy  man.  They  were  married  young;  a  mar- 
riage of  love  withal.  Young  Friedrich  Wilhelm's 
courtship ;  wedding  in  Holland ;  the  honest,  trustful 
walk  and  conversation  of  the  two  sovereign  spouses, 
their  journeyings  together,  their  mutual  hopes,  fears, 
and  manifold  vicissitudes,  till  death,  with  stem 
beauty,  shut  it  in ;  all  is  human,  true,  and  whole- 
some in  it,  interesting  to  look  upon,  and  rare  among 
sovereign  persons." 


190  APPENDIX. 

Louisa  died  in  1667,  twenty-one  years  before  het 
husband,  who  married  again —  (little  to  his  content- 
ment)—  died  in  1688;  and  Louisa's  second  son, 
Friedrich,  ten  years  old  at  his  mother's  death,  and 
now  therefore  thirty-one,  succeeds,  becoming  after- 
wards Friedrich  L  of  Prussia. 

And  here  we  pause  on  two  great  questions.  Prjssia 
is  assuredly  at  this  point  a  happier  and  better  coun- 
try than  it  was  when  inhabited  by  Wends.  But 
is  Friedrich  L  a  happier  and  better  man  than  Henry 
the  Fowler?  Have  all  these  kings  thus  improved 
their  country,  but  never  themselves  ?  Is  this  some- 
what expensive  and  ambitious  Herr,  Friedrich  L, 
buttoned  in  diamonds,  indeed  the  best  that  Protest- 
antism can  produce,  as  against  Fowlers,  Bears,  and 
Red  Beards .''  Much  more,  Friedrich  Wilhelm,  ortho- 
dox on  predestination ;  most  of  all,  his  less  orthodox 
son ;  —  have  we,  in  these,  the  highest  results  which 
Dr.  Martin  Luther  can  produce  for  the  present, 
in  the  first  circles  of  society?  And  if  not,  how  is  it 
that  the  country,  having  gained  so  much  in  intelligence 
and  strength,  lies  more  passively  in  their  power  than 
the  baser  country  did  under  that  of  nobler  men  ? 

These,  and  collateral  questions,  I  mean  to  work 
out  as  I  can,  with  Carlyle's  good  help ;  —  but  must 
pause  for  this  time ;  in  doubt,  as  heretofore.  Only 
of  this  one  thing  I  doubt  not,  that  the  name  of  all 
great  kings,  set  over  Christian  nations,  must  at  last 
be,  in  fulfilment,  the  hereditary  one  of  these  German 
princes,  "  Rich  in  Peace  ;"  and  that  their  coronation 
will  be  with  Wild  olive,  not  wUh  gold. 


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